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THE FREEMAN PAMPHLETS 




Copy 2 






IVIL WAR IN WEST VIRGINIA 



by 

Winthrop D. Lane 

A STORY OF THE INDUSTRIAL CONFLICT 
IN THE COAL MINES 

With an introduction by 

JOHN R. COMMONS 




B. W. HUEBSCH, Inc., 

NEW YORK 



50c. 



L . 



CIVIL WAR 

IN 

WEST VIRGINIA 



Pamphlets 



i 



on important subjects, written with authority, presenting impor- 
tant matters briefly. These neatly printed paper-covered books 
are good enough for the best library, but it is hoped that, because 
of their low price, readers will pass them on so that every copy 
may be in constant circulation. 

THE FREEMAN PAMPHLETS 

Anthony, Katharine (editor), The Endowment of Mother- 
hood (50c). 
Blok, Alexander, The Twelve (50c). 

Demartial, Georges, Patriotism, Truth and War Guilt (50c). 
Hackett, Francis (editor), On American Books (50c). 
Hillquit, Morris, Socialism on Trial (50c). 
Hirsch, Max, An Analysis of Socialism (50c). 
Russell, George W. C'TE"), The Economics of Ireland (25c). 
Streit, C. K., "Where Iron Is, There Is the Fatherland" (50c). 
Tolstoy, Leo, A Great Iniquity (25c). 



Bullitt, William C, The Bullitt Mission to Russia (50c). 
Foster, Wm. Z., The Great Steel Strike and Its Lessons ($1.00). 
Henderson, Arthur, The Aims of Labour (50c). 
Levine, Louis, The Taxation of Mines in Montana ($1.00). 
Morel, E. D., Truth and the War ($1.25). 

" " Africa and the Peace of Europe ($1.25). 

" " Ten Years of Secret Diplomacy ($1.25). 

" " Red Rubber ($1.25). 
Phillips, Marion, and others, Women and the Labour Party 

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Webb, Sidney, The Restoration of Trade Union Conditions 
(50c). 



For sale at all good bookstores, or of 
B. W. Huebsch, Inc., Publisher, New York City 



Civil War /« West Virginia 

i r 
BY 

WINTHROP D. LANE 



A STORY OF THE INDUSTRIAL CONFLICT 
IN THE COAL MINES 

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 

JOHN R. COMMONS 




NEW YORK 



B. W. HUEBSCH, Inc., MCMXXI 



COPYRIGHT, 1 92 1, BY 
B. W. HUEBSCH, INC. 






-.«n 



g)CI.A622546 
AUG 26 Ml ^ 






TABLE OF CONTENTS 

Introduction by John R. Commons, 7 
Author's Preface, 11 

CHAPTER 

I. The Conflict, 15 

II. Paternalism and What it Means, 21 

III. Some Good Mining Camps, 31 

IV. Some Bad Mining Camps, 36 
V. Why the Fight is so Intense, 42 

VI. Eviction and Insecurity of Residence, 47 

VII. Deputy Sheriffs in the Pay of Operators, 52 

VIII. How the Deputy Sheriffs Earn Their Money, 

58 

IX. "Yellow Dog" Contracts, 64 

X. Suppression by Injunction, 68 

XL The Private Detective Self-Revealed, 74 

XII. Types of Non-Union Operators, 80 

XIII. The Union — Its Leaders and Purposes, 85 

XIV. The Union and Petty Strikes, 94 
XV. Violence — On Both Sides, 99 

XVI. The Famous "March" of Miners, 105 

XVIL Wages in Union and Non-union Fields, no 

XVIII. Who Owns the Coal Lands?, 119 

XIX. Conclusions, 124 

[5] 



INTRODUCTION 



BY JOHN R. COMMONS 



Mr. Lane's account of the mining situation in West 
Virginia makes plain the issue that faces the nation: 
Shall the Supreme Court of the United States deny to 
labor unions the right to persuade? It is no longer, 
Shall labor unions be prohibited from committing vio- 
lence. It is, Shall they be prohibited from even per- 
suading non-unionists to join? 

In the final analysis this is not a judicial question at 
all. It is a legislative question. It is a question of 
public policy. The Supreme Court has decided the public 
policy of the nation. It has decided that labor shall not 
have the right to organize even by peaceful persuasion, 
and the federal and state courts in West Virginia are 
executing the decision by injunctions. 

The injunction takes the form of prohibiting organizers 
and even former employees from persuading employees to 
break their contracts of employment. The employees enter 
into a contract with their employer not to join a labor 
union while employed; and not even, after quitting or 
being discharged, to persuade other employees to join the 
union. 

The contract of employment states the grounds on 
which the contract is made. It is "in order to preserve 
to each man the right to do such work as he pleases 
and for whom he pleases and the right to payment in pro- 

[7] 



portion to service rendered, to preserve the natural and 
constitutional right of individual contract, to preserve to 
each individual the fruits of his own labor, and to pro- 
mote the interests of both parties hereto. ,, 

In order to enjoy these rights of individual contract 
the employee contracts that he will not thereafter, whether 
while employed or after being discharged or voluntarily 
quitting, attempt to exercise any right of collective contract 
respecting that employer. 

And he makes this individual contract with the agent 
of the United States Steel Corporation, or with the agent 
of the Norfolk and Western Railway Company, con- 
trolled by the Pennsylvania Railroad Company — in short, 
he makes this contract with the associated financiers of 
the Nation. 

Suppose a labor organization should become so powerful 
and foolish as to insist on individual contracts with finan- 
ciers to the effect that the financier should agree that, in 
order to preserve his right to hire such workers as he 
individually pleased, and in order "to preserve his natu- 
ral and constitutional rights of individual contract," he 
would not, at any time thereafter, enter into any con- 
tract with any association or corporation of financiers to 
deal collectively with the labor organization — it would 
at once be seen that what the labor organization is doing 
is what it is doing in Russia, acting collectively itself 
but compelling the capitalists to bargain individually. 

This is, indeed, a great issue of public policy. Shall 
the financiers of the nation have the right to organize, 
and labor be denied the right to organize? The federal 
courts and the state courts of West Virginia have so 
decided. The decision is based on the "natural and con- 
stitutional right of individual contract." 

Yet it is well known that the courts have held many 

[8] 



contracts void as being contrary to morals, or contrary 
to public policy, or obtained under duress, and so on. The 
courts might, perhaps, have so decided respecting these 
anti-union contracts. Perhaps they did not realize that 
the contracts are made between the associated financiers 
of the nation on the one side and individual mine workers 
on the other side. It is a great convenience to treat a 
corporation as an individual, and to hold that a contract 
between a subsidiary of the Steel Corporation and an 
employee of that subsidiary is an individual contract, to 
be protected by "natural and constitutional right." 

But in this case it is a convenience out-of-date. To 
get back to individual contracts we should go back to 
colonial times when the constitution was framed and 
when the employer was strictly a "natural" individual, 
like the worker. To-day the employer is an artificial 
individual, as huge even as the government of a nation, 
held together by the credit system, by community of 
interest, and by operation of law. The science of 
law has been stated by the court to be a progressive science. 
If so, the court should investigate the artificial being 
which it has created, and inquire whether another arti- 
ficial being, the labor organization, is not just as natural 
and constitutional. It would seem that if financiers have 
obtained a natural right to join a powerful corporation 
and thus give up their right to make individual contracts 
in that respect, so workers might be protected in a similar 
natural right to join an organization powerful enough 
to deal with that corporation. The natural right to 
contract is not always a natural right to give up the 
right to contract. 

It is also a proper legal question whether these anti- 
union contracts are really contracts at all. They assume 
the guise of contracts, but a labor contract is at most 

[9] 



only a contract at will, or from day to day or from week 
to week. The employer can discharge without notice and 
the employee can quit without notice. As pointed out 
recently by the editor of the Yale Law Journal (April, 
1921), neither of the parties to such a contract "is under 
a contractual duty as to succeeding days and consequently 
no third person can induce a breach thereof." In this 
case there is no contractual duty of employment on the 
part of the Mining Company. Yet, although there is no 
contractual duty to continue employment, the court treats 
the matter as though there were. This is doubtless due 
to the origin of this action in the ancient law of master and 
servant. Originally the master had a right of action against 
a third party for seducing his servant to leave and thus 
causing a loss of the services due to the master. "Even 
though this seduction theory is properly exploded," says 
the editor of the Yale Law Journal, "there seems to be a 
vestige of it still remaining in the minds of the courts." 
That vestige is visible in West Virginia. Persuasion 
to join a union is as unlawful as violence. 



[10] 



AUTHOR'S PREFACE 



The conflict over unionism in West Virginia is neither 
temporary nor sporadic. It is a deep-seated and continu- 
ous struggle. It is more fundamental than occasional 
strikes and more sensational, even, than the murder of 
mine guards and miners. Any competent narrative of it 
is an answer to the question: What happens when an 
aggressive labor union determines to organize a particular 
set of workers, and aggressive employers say that it shall 
not? 

This question is important at all times. It is espe- 
cially important just now when employers are everywhere 
fighting labor unions under the slogan of the "open shop," 
and the whole question of industrial relations is so much 
to the fore. In West Virginia the conflict is seen in all 
of its brutal nakedness, with both sides prepared for combat 
to the bitter end and relentless in pursuit of their goals. 

The fight reaches back to the first attempts by the 
miners, thirty years ago, to organize. It is in direct line 
of succession to a long series of sharp conflicts — to strikes 
that have paralyzed industry, to bloody encounters be- 
tween mine guards and miners, to muzzling injunctions, 
to the eviction of miners from their houses, to Congres- 
sional investigations, to the use of United States troops, 
to the payment of public officials with private funds, 
and to retaliatory violence committed by the men who 
work in the mines. Such scenes as Stanniford in 1902, 
when miners lost their lives in a battle with armed gun- 

in] 



men; as Cabin Creek and Paint Creek in 19 12, when 
civil war raged for a time; as Matewan in 1920, when 
ten people were killed in a shooting affray with private 
detectives: these are the raw material out of which his- 
tory has been made in the coal fields of West Virginia. 

To-day the conflict is as intense as ever. Whether 
another investigation by Congress is required the reader 
may judge for himself. A resolution calling for such 
an inquiry was introduced into the Senate last February 
and was referred to the Committee on Audit to deter- 
mine its cost. The miners are making an attempt, as 
these pages go to press, to secure authorization for such 
an inquiry. 

The following chapters first appeared as a series of 
news articles, running from February 7 to March 3, in 
the New York Evening Post. The author spent a num- 
ber of weeks in West Virginia, not only gathering the 
story of the conflict but studying the civilization that lies 
back of it. He has tried to picture that civilization, with 
its semi-feudal and paternalistic features, in these chap- 
ters. For the most part newspapers to-day do not try 
to give thorough and illuminating accounts of intricate 
and vital matters. They wait until some sensational 
episode affords the l 'news' ' emergency deemed necessary 
for "playing up" what, without that emergency, is plen- 
tifully important; and then they tell only of the emer- 
gency, with perhaps sufficient detail concerning the situ- 
ation as a whole to whet the discriminating reader's in- 
terest. They do not supply the perspective necessary for 
a real understanding of what is going on. Being inter- 
ested only in what is happening to-day, they do not often 
enough try to make that intelligible in the only way that 
it can be made intelligible, namely, by telling what hap- 
pened yesterday. Moreover, they do not search beneath 

[12] 



I 



the surface. They find space for a shooting affray with- 
out telling what caused the affray; they discuss the vio- 
lence accompanying strikes without making known what 
led to the strikes. In all of the recent dispatches that 
have come out of West Virginia, none, so far as the 
writer is aware, have dealt with injunctions, with "y e il° w 
dog" contracts, with the fact that the one hundred thou- 
sand miners in the state live in no security of residence 
whatever, with the hiring of deputy sheriffs by the opera- 
tors, 1 with the ownership of coal lands, with the pater- 
nalistic aspect of the miners life and with other equally 
important matters. That newspapers can do this, and 
that it is one of their legitimate functions to do so, is 
strongly supported, it is hoped, by the present example of 
the New York Evening Post, however poor the execu- 
tion of the task may have been. 

Thanks are due for permission to reprint to Mr. Edwin 
F. Gay, president of the New York Evening Post, Inc. 
It will be found that additional material has been in- 
serted in Chapter II dealing with the use of "scrip" and 
other methods of paying coal miners. Thanks are due 
also to Mr. Joseph G. Bradley, a non-union coal operator 
of West Virginia whose own mine is, in its physical as- 
pects, one of the best in the state. Other persons who have 
assisted in the collecting of facts are named in the course 
of the chapters. 

Winthrop D. Lane. 

New York City, April 20, iQ2i. 



^he essential facts in regard to this were published by 
Arthur Gleason in The Nation for May 29, 1920. 



[13] 



THE CONFLICT 



West Virginia is today in a state of civil war. This 
civil war is of a peculiar kind. It is not being fought by 
armies in the field, led by military commanders and seek- 
ing military victory. It is more subtle and covert than 
that. It is being fought through many of the ordinary 
channels of civilization. It is being fought in the courts, 
through the power to withhold jobs, through the owner- 
ship of men's homes, through the control of local govern- 
ment. It is being fought by strikes, by appeals to class 
interest, and the occasional resort to violence. Its 
weapons are injunctions, special kinds of contracts of 
employment, impassioned oratory and the refusal to work. 

The forces opposed to each other in this war are the 
owners and operators of coal mines, on the one hand, 
and the men who produce coal, the miners, on the other. 
The miners are assisted and encouraged by the United 
Mine Workers of America, a labor union affiliated with 
the American Federation of Labor. The issue between 
these two forces is: Shall the miners have the right to 
belong to the United Mine Workers of America and to 
bargain collectively with their employers? 

Nobody denies the miner's naked right to join the 
union. The men who manage and operate the coal 
mines of West Virginia do not say: "You cannot become 
a member of the United Mine Workers of America." 



What they say is this: "You cannot become a member 
of the United Mine Workers of America and continue 
to work for us." Men who join are discharged. 

The operators say, moreover, to the union: "Your 
organizers shall not come among our men. We will not 
let you make your appeal to them." 

The operators believe that their position is justified. 
They believe that the union is selfish, domineering, 
unscrupulous. They believe that it will change their 
relations with their employees, and they see in its power 
rising costs of operating their mines. They are deter- 
mined, therefore, to keep it out. 

The miners, on the other hand, believe that they have 
a right to belong to the union. They believe that this 
is an important and fundamental right. Moreover, they 
believe that certain tangible advantages will come to 
them from joining the union. They can then secure 
wage agreements, specifying that certain rates of pay 
and conditions of employment shall be binding over a 
definite period of time. They believe that in this way 
they can earn more money and make better homes for 
their families. 

The operators are in the position of power. Their 
power comes chiefly from their ownership of property. 
They own — or if they do not own, they lease, which is 
the same thing so far as power is concerned — practically 
all of the property that exists around a coal mine. The 
mining town is built on their property; they build it. 
They own the houses. They own the stores and the 
amusement places. They often build the churches and 
frequently the schoolhouses. They guarantee the church 
against loss and sometimes supplement the salary of the 
school teacher. They own the building in which the 
Y. M. C. A. is located and can put the secretary out if 

[16] 



they want to. They own the meeting halls. Sometimes 
they own even the roads. 

Thus the operators are not only the miner's employer; 
they are his landlord, his merchant, the provider of his 
amusements, the sanitary officer of his town, sometimes 
the source of his police protection and the patron of his 
physician, his minister, and his school teacher. 

On the other hand, the power of the miner is his power 
to refuse to work. He can exercise this power to the 
great inconvenience of the operator. He can shut down 
plants. He can interfere with the production of coal. 
He can cause financial loss. He can also, through the 
union, make appeals to the class interest of his fellow 
workers; he can cause disaffection and stir up strife; he 
can make capital out of the hostility of the operator. 
His power is neither so many-sided nor so controllable 
as that of the operator, but it is effective. 

These are the forces that are opposed to each other 
in this West Virginia warfare. The war is being fought 
through the control of public officials. In one strongly 
non-union county there are twenty-five deputy sheriffs 
stationed on the properties of various coal producing com- 
panies. These deputy sheriffs are public officials, nomi- 
nated by the sheriff and appointed by the County Court. 
They give bond as required by law. Their salaries, how- 
ever, are paid by the operators. The treasurer of the 
local operators' association gives $32,700 a year to the 
sheriff for this purpose. These deputies perform certain 
services for the operators. They guard the company 
payrolls from the office to the mine twice a month, for 
example. The operators defend this arrangement and 
say the county needs this extra police protection. But 
several hundred pages of testimony taken by a commis- 
sion appointed by Gov. Cornwell showed that these same 

[17] 



deputy sheriffs clubbed men who talked unionism and 
ran union organizers out of the county. 

The war is being fought through the control of men's 
jobs. Men are being discharged for joining the union. 
That is not all. Throughout a large part of the non- 
union territory jobs are being given only to men who will 
sign contracts agreeing to leave the union, if they are 
already members, or not to join if they are not. 

The war is being fought through the ownership of 
men's houses. Miners have been evicted for joining the 
union; their families and their furniture have been put 
out on the street. Forcible evictions, however, lead to 
trouble. So the operators have sought other means of 
putting men out of their houses. They have attempted 
to do so by law; and in so doing they have set up the 
contention that miners living in company-owned houses 
are not tenants but servants. This means that the miners 
are not entitled to notice that they must vacate by a certain 
date, but that they can be evicted the moment their em- 
ployment ceases. The courts have, in effect, sustained 
this contention. Thus, one-fourth of the adult males in 
West Virginia, comprising the labor force of a basic in- 
dustry, have no security of residence. 

The war is being fought through injunctions. State 
courts have enjoined union representatives from trying 
to persuade the miners of two counties to join the union, 
and an injunction granted by a federal court does the 
same thing with respect to the miners of a single com- 
pany in another county. Another Federal injunction 
prohibits the officials and organizers of the union from 
even making the statement that a strike exists. 

The war is being fought through the use of private 
detectives. At least two associations of operators have 
contracts with the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency for 

[18] 



a number of "secret service" men. These "secret service" 
men work in and about the mines without letting any 
one know of their presence and report upon whatever 
activities their employers want them to report upon. 

United States troops have been used in the war. Twice 
in the last six months of 1920 troops were thrown into 
Mingo County, where there was a strike. If you are an 
operator you believe that these soldiers were necessary to 
protect property and to preserve order. If you are a 
member of the union you believe that they were there to 
protect strikebreakers and help to break the strike. 

On the side of the miners and the union, the war is 
being fought by opposing the legal measures of the opera- 
tors, by striking, by appeals to class interest, by trying 
to make unorganized men want the union, by bitter de- 
nunciations of the operators, and by meeting violence with 
violence. 

The union has lost most of its legal battles. It has 
called one strike recently to secure recognition of the 
union; that was in Mingo County, after a large number 
of miners there had joined the union and the operators 
had refused to meet union representatives in conference. 

The miners have been appealed to in many of the 
customary phrases of class warfare. They have been told 
that they are being "robbed" and "enslaved" by their 
employers, and have been urged to use their power for 
the advancement of the working class. Agitation has been 
intermittent and based upon an opportunist policy. Or- 
ganizers have gone into non-union territory at times when 
their own safety was in danger to appeal to the workers. 

Violence has been resorted to on both sides. Who 
brought the first gun into West Virginia, or who fired 
the first shot, is now a question of history, of twenty years 
or more ago. It would be profitless to try. to answer it. 

[19] 



The secretary of an operators' association told me that 
following the strike of 1902 it became a widespread 
practice among operators in non-union districts to employ 
"private police/' w 7 hose job was to know when organizers 
came into the territory and to tell them that they were 
not wanted. Many of these private police were armed. 
The operators have openly employed bodies of armed 
men during the course of several strikes; T. L. Felts, 
a partner of the Baldwin-Felts agency, told me that he 
had supplied the operators with 300 armed men during 
the Cabin Creek strike of 19 12. The secretary referred 
to above declared that the ownership of arms and the 
resort to violence by the miners had been "in imitation 
of the methods employed by the operators after the strike 
of 1902." 

To-day both sides are armed in many places. During 
my visit the civil authorities of Mingo County, encour- 
aged by the presence of United States troops, took great 
quantities of arms from both miners and operators. An 
operator in Logan County showed me his "arsenal," 
Several union officials have deemed it necessary to take 
out licenses to carry revolvers. 

This is, in brief, an outline of the civil war that is 
being waged in West Virginia to-day. The war is not 
State-wide. Of 95,000 mine workers in the State, some 
53,000 are already unionized. There are large territories 
where the operators and the union are working amicably 
under joint agreements. The fight centres about the rest 
of the State. It is hottest in a few counties. Both sides 
are determined. Both believe they are right. There is 
no prospect of a peaceful solution. 

In succeeding chapters these phases of the conflict will 
be elaborated and other phases discussed. 

[20] 



II 



PATERNALISM AND WHAT IT MEANS 



If you will take a map of West Virginia, you will see 
that it is much like the map of any other State. Deep 
ridges of hills cut across its eastern and southwestern por- 
tions, but aside from these there is little to distinguish it 
from other maps; the same winding lines indicate rivers, 
the same dots show where its towns are, the same network 
of railways connects these dots. One can easily imagine 
the life that goes on in these towns as being the same that 
goes on in small towns everywhere. He can imagine 
people owning their own homes, following a variety of 
occupations, attending to their own little affairs, and shar- 
ing in the town's common activities. He can imagine 
them acting like the independent citizens of other com- 
munities. 

But he will be mistaken. Nothing of the sort goes 
on there. In the coal mining fields of West Virginia, 
comprising parts or all of thirty-six counties, the dots on 
the map do not stand for towns in the ordinary sense. 
They do not indicate places where people lead an inter- 
related, many-sided, and mutually dependent existence. 
They stand for clusters of houses around a coal mine. 
They indicate points at which seams of coal have been 
opened, tipples erected, and coal has been brought forth 
as fuel. 

True, people live here, but they live here to work. 
The communities exist for the coal mines. They are the 
adjuncts and necessary conveniences of an industry. They 

[21] 



are not independent groups of people. They are not even 
called towns in the language of the locality. They are 
called "camps." 

No one owns his own house. No one conducts a store, 
runs a garage, sells groceries or furniture to his fellow 
townsmen, or amuses them in a movie theatre. No one 
is free to decide to-day that he will change his occupation 
to-morrow, because there is no other occupation than coal 
mining; the only way he can change his occupation is to 
move to some other region. 

There is no independent family physician building up 
a practice by competing with other physicians. There 
are no local lawyers settling the community's difficulties 
over property rights, because the ordinary citizen has no 
property rights and can secure none. It is seldom, too, 
that any one campaigns for a new school or tries to find 
a better teacher, because these things are taken care ot 
for him. No group of people ever get together and 
decide that the old church is too shabby and that they 
will get a new one. They wait till such things are done 
for them. 

It is not quite true to say that no one does these things. 
The coal company does them all. The essential charac- 
teristic of a coal-mining civilization, in West Virginia 
as well as in some other parts of the country, is the 
extent to which the employer, the company, controls 
things. It is a paternalistic, in some ways a feudal, civi- 
lization. 

Let us take a typical coal-mining plant. In the first 
place, the company owns practically all of the property. 
Usually it owns it for a considerable distance around the 
mine. It owns all of the buildings and the land on which 
they are erected. It owns the houses, the stores, the 
movie theatre, the Y. M. C. A. (if there is one), the 

[22] 



school, the churches — in a word, the whole town. It 
employs the physician, and collects something each month 
from every miner to help pay him. It often guarantees 
the salary of the minister and not infrequently supple- 
ments that of the school teacher. 

The company is thus responsible for the welfare of 
the town. It is the sanitary officer with all his usual 
functions. It takes care of the roads, provides the light- 
ing, determines the variety of amusements, and sometimes 
supplies the police protection. It can exercise supervision 
over persons coming into the town and events there. It 
can keep undesirable people out. It can, if it wants to, 
even censor the mail, since the Post Office is usually 
located in its general store and one of its employees is 
Postmaster. 

Moreover, the company does not pay the people of the 
town as factories and most other industrial establishments 
pay their employees. It does not pay in cash all that the 
men earn. Each pay day the miner is handed a statement, 
showing his total earnings for the preceding period, usually 
a fortnight, and the amount of his indebtedness to the 
company. This indebtedness has been incurred for vari- 
ous items. It includes his purchases at the company store 
and rent; it includes fixed charges for the lighting of his 
house, for coal supplied as fuel, for the services of the 
company doctor and the company hospital, and the sharp- 
ening of his tools. The total of all such charges is sub- 
tracted from his earnings and he then receives the re- 
mainder in cash. 

The charges for these items vary. Rent ranges from 
$1.50 to $2.50 a month for each room; a standard four- 
room house thus costs from $6 to $10 a month, $8 prob- 
ably being the prevailing price. Most mining camps have 
electricity, and the charge for lighting the miner's house 

[23] 



is sometimes uniform in a single camp, sometimes depends 
upon the number of lights. It averages, roughly, about 
$i a month. Coal, supplied by the company and burned 
in open grates, costs from $i to $2 a month, with 50 
cents a load usually added for hauling; this is ordinarily 
a fixed charge and is the same the year round. 

The doctor is employed by the company. The men 
pay fixed amounts whether they require his services or not. 
This is so small, ranging from $1 to $2 a month and 
sometimes varying for married and single men, that if 
a family experiences much sickness it is likely to get off 
cheaply. If it goes for a long time without sickness, it 
pays, of course, for services that it does not receive. Extra 
sums are usually charged for operations, and especially 
for child-birth. The charge for hospital service ranges 
from fifty cents to $1 a month; this, too, often varies 
for single and married men. Some companies have hos- 
pitals of their own and others use the hospitals in nearby 
towns. 

Miners pay for the sharpening of their tools, usually 
about twenty-five cents a month. They pay five cents 
apiece for their "mine checks, ,, metal discs numbered and 
hung on the inside of each car as it comes out of the 
mine loaded; this enables the company to credit each 
man with the number of cars loaded by him. The money 
for these checks is returned to the man when he leaves 
his employment. Some companies charge for the use of 
the wash house, in which the miners clean up after a 
day's work. Seventy-five cents a month is a usual charge 
for this. 

Thus do the companies control all of the financial oper- 
ations to which they are a part and insure themselves 
against loss. The extent to which they control is indi- 
cated by the fact that miners who take lodgers are not 

[24] 



allowed in some camps to collect rent from the lodgers 
themselves, but this is paid first to the company and is 
then turned over to the miner to whom it belongs on 
pay day. 

This is the "check-off" system of paying wages. When 
all of these charges have been subtracted from the earnings 
of the mine worker he receives the remainder in cash. 
The amount of cash received depends, of course, upon 
how much he has earned and how much he owes the 
company. If he is able to work with fair steadiness and 
has no unforeseen expenses, he will have a substantial 
balance to his credit; on the other hand, when work is 
slack his fixed expenses may account for nearly all of his 
income. It is not an unknown experience for a man to find 
that he owes the coal company money when pay day comes 
around. 

I have before me a sworn list of the men working for 
a large coal company, together with their earnings, debits 
and balances due in cash, for a single half month. This 
half month is from November 15 to November 30, 1920. 
There is no way of telling how many days any of these 
men worked. The average earnings of the 266 men on 
this pay-roll were $79.31 for the half month. Their 
average debits, or amounts owed the company, were 
$26.16. The average amounts received in cash, there- 
fore, were $53.15. It is impossible to say just what 
expenses these "debits" covered, because many of the men 
may have purchased at places other than the company 
stores. One man earned $107.50 and owed the company 
$100.25, so that he received $7.25 in cash; another earned 
$72 and owed the company $65.55, so that he received 
$6.45. These are the two lowest amounts received in 
cash. Thirty-nine men received less than $30. The 
range of total earnings was from $193.57, the highest, 

[25] 



to $24.32, the lowest. These facts are given merely 
as illustrations of the way in which the system works; 
it would be impossible to tell how fairly they represent 
the average for the State without much fuller data. 

Nearly all coal companies use scrip to facilitate trade 
at the company stores. This scrip may be either in the 
form of coupons, issued in books, or of pieces of metal 
rounded like coins and stamped in various denominations. 
The methods of issuing this scrip are not always the same, 
but commonly something like this: This scrip is issued 
to employees in advance of purchases. It is issued to the 
extent of their credit. That is, it is issued to them in 
amounts up to the total of their earnings at the moment, 
or what is due them from the company. If a man has 
earned $22, say, and this has not been paid, he is entitled 
to scrip up to that amount. The scrip is immediately 
charged to him on the pay-roll. It is redeemable in mer- 
chandise at the company store. In some camps it is re- 
deemable at other places also, such as pool rooms, lunch 
wagons, motion picture theatres and other company-owned 
enterprises. 

The use of scrip is very likely to induce miners to spend 
more freely than they would if it were actual money 
they were spending. Mr. J. N. Schweitzer, the general 
superintendent of the Lundale Coal Company, writes to 
me quite frankly: 

"It is usually the case with the employees around the 
mine that they have scrip to spend for theatre tickets and 
other places where it can be used when they do not have 
the money. Therefore, by giving them the privilege of 
handling scrip in this way, much more of it is being spent 
and the attendance at our theatres would not be so large 
if we did not allow them to use the scrip for purchasing 
tickets." 

[26] 



I 



There are laws in West Virginia in regard to the issu- 
ance of scrip by mining companies and other corporations. 
One of these laws, passed in 1887, has to do with the 
payment of wages in lawful money: 

"All persons, firms, companies, corporations or asso- 
ciations, engaged in the business aforesaid [mining coal, 
ore, or other minerals, or mining and manufacturing them, 
as well as other occupations], shall settle with their 
employees at least once in every two weeks unless other- 
wise provided by special agreement, and pay them the 
amount due them for their work or services in lawful 
money of the United States, or by the cash order as 
described and required in the next succeeding section of 
this act. Provided, That nothing herein contained shall 
affect the right of an employee to assign the whole or 
any part of his claim against his employer." 

Another law, passed in 1891, deals directly with the 
issuance of scrip: 

"It shall be unlawful for any corporation, company, 
firm or person, engaged in any trade or business, either 
directly or indirectly, to issue, sell, give or deliver, to any 
person employed by such corporation, company, firm or 
person, in payment of wages due such laborer or as ad- 
vances for labor not due, any scrip, token, draft, check 
or other evidence of indebtedness, payable or redeemable 
otherwise than in lawful money; and if any such scrip, 
token, draft, check or other evidence of indebtedness, be 
so issued, sold, given or delivered to such laborer, it shall 
be construed, taken, and held in all courts and places, to 
be a promise to pay the sum specified therein in lawful 
money by the corporation, company, firm or person, issuing, 
selling, giving or delivering the same to the person named 
therein or to the holder thereof." 

[27] 



J 



Violation of this act is made a misdemeanor. 

I do not know of any case in which the issuance of 
scrip by a coal company has been passed upon by a court 
in the light of these statutes. Operators to whom I 
talked denied that there was any violation of law in 
their use of scrip. Samuel B. Montgomery, state com- 
missioner, has a different view. He writes: 

"The issuing of scrip by a coal company has been car- 
ried on for years and is a violation of the law for the 
reason that this scrip is issued in lieu of lawful money 
and is only redeemable in merchandise. " 

Miners are not now compelled to trade at company 
stores, as they were not so very long ago. One owner 
of a mine told me that he had formerly discharged men 
"for buying two dollars' worth of flour somewhere else." 
Frequently, however, the company is a virtual monopoly; 
there is no other store near enough to be used. Miners 
complain, moreover, that wage advances are often ab- 
sorbed, in whole or in part, by increases in price at the 
company stores. Mr. Montgomery, who is friendly to 
the miners in his point of view, supports this contention. 
He writes: 

"The 'company store' is one of the sore spots in the 
whole scheme of things. When a wage increase is given 
the miners, the store management almost invariably in- 
creases prices to offset it. In a few weeks the miner real- 
izes that he has been 'gulled' and is more irritable than 
ever. This vicious circle continued all during the war. 
This is not a surmise, but I have witnessed it and tested 
it out. In a given coal field we reached a wage settle- 
ment at one o'clock Sunday morning; I was acting as 
mediator. It was during the war. At two o'clock a m. 
runners were sent out by the union officials notifying the 
men to return to work at once, which they did. On the 

[28] 



following Tuesday morning retail prices were advanced 
exactly enough to absorb the wage increases. 

" Coercion is no longer used to impel the miners to deal 
at the company store, but there are hundreds of mining 
camps in West Virginia where there is no 'free land/ and 
the camp being 'company owned' there are no independent 
stores, hence as a result the miners must deal at the com- 
pany store, because in nearly every case hucksters and 
peddlers are prohibited from canvassing the camp." 

There is, of course, a historical explanation of much 
of this mode of doing business and of life. Coal mines 
have usually been opened — this is certainly true in West 
Virginia — in remote and sparsely settled regions. The 
first surveyors have had to ride horseback up the stony 
beds of mountain streams; they have had to find shelter 
in pioneers' cabins or even on the open sides of hills. Be- 
fore the coal could be got at, a railroad had to be con- 
structed. Then the first elements of civilization were 
brought in; houses were built for the labor that was to 
be recruited; a tipple was erected, and other necessary 
building done. 

But men do not live by houses alone. Food was neces- 
sary, and so the company built a store and became a 
storekeeper. In time other needs became apparent. The 
children of miners required a school; a schoolhouse was 
built. Soon churches followed. 

In time other mines on the same property or on adjoin- 
ing property were opened. Other towns were built. Soon 
there was a flourishing industry of coal mining throughout 
the country. But not even this exhausted the growth. 
Coal lay everywhere — for hundreds of miles on every 
hand. Other companies, coming in, imitated the first. 
The land was all owned by the coal companies ; whatever 
was built on it followed the ownership of the land. Thus, 

[29] 



what had begun in necessity became the prevailing char- 
acteristic of the whole industry. 

To-day this civilization is the settled condition of exist- 
ence for hundreds of thousands of people. 

It is evident that this state of affairs is a natural one 
to the operator. He sees it either as a historical growth 
or as a universal condition. He thinks it cannot be 
changed. And he usually regards it, from the point -of 
view of mining coal, as efficient. 

To the miner it does not always appear in quite the 
same light. He sees it as it affects himself and his family 
daily. He cannot escape from the dependent position in 
which it places him. The coal company touches his life 
at every point. If there is a playground for his children, 
it is because the coal company has generously supplied 
it. If the prices charged him for food at the company 
store are reasonable, it is because the coal company de- 
crees it. If the physical aspects of his life, on the whole, 
are tolerable, it is because he is fortunate enough to have 
a beneficent employer. 

The picture drawn above has nothing to do, directly, 
with unionism or non-unionism. The civilization of 
the mining town is much the same where the miners are 
organized and where they are not; the union functions 
chiefly in other ways. But how far this civilization may 
affect the desire for unionism is another matter. It may, 
in the last analysis, account for much in the miner's state 
of mind. No one has yet, so far as I know, fully analyzed 
the psychological appeal of labor unionism. To the miners 
working in West Virginia coal mines, any opportunity 
for collective action, for joining with their fellows in an 
effort to escape from their pervading dependence, may 
seem welcome. 

[30] 



Ill 



SOME GOOD MINING CAMPS 

What is the practical working out of this paternalistic, 
semi-feudal regime? How do miners actually live in 
West Virginia? During my visits I saw towns in which 
the houses were neat, well painted and sanitary ; in which 
there were excellent school buildings, Y. M. C. A.'s and 
hospitals; in which life was made fairly pleasant and 
interesting through gymnasiums, motion picture theatres, 
club houses, playgrounds and other facilities of a desirable 
nature. 

I also saw towns in which the houses were falling into 
disrepair — unpainted, neglected, forlorn. I saw whole 
communities that had no garbage collection and in which 
the soil was being constantly polluted from surface privies. 
I saw schools consisting of single rooms, with six or eight 
grades of children occupying them at a time. There are 
towns in which the only playgrounds for children are 
empty coal cars or the stony beds of creeks, and there 
are dwellings that receive continuous baths of grime and 
smoke from open coke ovens close by. 

One general condition of West Virginia mining camps 
needs to be mentioned. Coal is taken in West Virginia 
almost entirely from the sides of steep hills. These hills 
are close together. The narrow valleys between them 
sometimes allow room enough only for the bed of a creek. 
This topographical trait is the worst enemy of the mining 
town. It is extremely difficult sometimes to find room 

[31] 



for houses in these narrow valleys. By the time a railroad 
has been run up the creek and the necessary buildings for 
taking care of the company's business have been erected 
there is very little space left for other construction. Houses 
are put up wherever the earth's surface affords a holding 
place. 

Let us go first to the site of the Elk River Coal and 
Lumber Company, at Widen. This is a non-union camp. 
Here we shall find living conditions better than the ordi- 
nary. The valley of Buffalo Creek opens out at this 
point and allows something like a town plan. There are 
several streets, and the houses are neat frame structures, 
painted red with white trimmings. They are not plas- 
tered — plaster is far from universal in mining towns — 
but are finished in wood on the inside and, with their 
coal-burning grates, are fairly comfortable. Most of the 
houses have four rooms, some six. 

Another feature found here that is common to mining 
towns is the uniform design of the houses — a circumstance 
doubtless making for lower rents, and also for monotony. 
The houses are set in straight rows, which adds to the 
monotony, but each has a yard, while occasional flowers 
and window boxes in summer give them a home-like ap- 
pearance. The houses are electrically lighted, and each 
one has a single bulb suspended from the porch ceiling 
as a means of lighting the street. The miners pay rent 
for these houses at the rate of $2 a room a month. 

Ashes and garbage are regularly removed. There is no 
running water in the houses, water for drinking as well 
as other purposes being obtained from wells drilled in the 
street. A well stands in front of every fifth house. Each 
house has a privy in the rear. None of the streets is 
paved, though board sidewalks are laid throughout most 
of the town. 

[32] 



The company operates a dairy farm ten miles away, 
from which bottled milk is supplied to the 1,000 or 1,200 
residents of Widen. In the central part of the town a 
Y. M. C. A. building contains pool and billiard tables, 
a gymnasium, bowling alleys, a reading and writing room, 
a barber shop, and shower baths. This is the gathering 
place for the men and boys of the town. Three motion 
picture shows a week are given in a substantially built 
theatre seating 250. There is a clubhouse for officials 
and a playground, with simple apparatus, for children. 
The company store is small and inadequate, and a larger 
one was being built when I was there. An attractive 
ice cream parlor stands in the centre of the town. 

The Roman Catholics have rented a church, the Prot- 
estant services being held in the Y. M. C. A. building. 
The school building has three rooms in which eight grades 
recite. The company pays the salaries of two teachers 
and a principal for three months each year, thereby length- 
ening the school term from six to nine months. 

An unusual feature is a bank, under State supervision, 
in which the employees are encouraged to open both check- 
ing and savings accounts. When I was there the bank 
had 234 checking accounts of people living in town, the 
average size of these being $156. The average size of 
the sixty-eight savings accounts was $387. The employees 
are afforded protection under the State Workmen's Com- 
pensation Law, and in addition the company gives each 
man who has been on the pay rolls three months a $500 
life insurance policy in the Metropolitan Life Insurance 
Company of New York. When he has been in its employ 
a year this is raised to $1,000. 

Let us go next to the camp of the Lundale Coal Com- 
pany at Lundale, in Logan County. Here we shall find 
many features similar to those just described. New houses 

[33] 



are being plastered and are storm-sided and double-doored. 
The camp has a water system consisting of wells from 
which water is pumped to large tanks elevated about 200 
feet above the creek level, and water is distributed through 
water mains. This company and three others under the 
same management have a joint hospital, a fourteen-room 
building, well equipped. The hospital force consists of 
a doctor with two assistants and several trained nurses. 
There is a modern dairy farm at this place also. 

Other companies that furnish living conditions either 
very good or better than the average are the Island Creek 
Coal Company at Holden, the E. E. White Coal Company 
at Glen White, and the Solvay Collieries Company. These 
by no means exhaust the list. At Boarderland some of 
the employees of the Boarderland Coal Corporation live 
in brick houses with running water in them. There is a 
noticeable tendency among the newer companies and at 
mines most recently opened to make living conditions bet- 
ter than the general run of those at older camps. 

One respect in which some of the mining companies 
of West Virginia are trying to improve conditions is in 
regard to schools. West Virginia does not stand high in 
her provision for education. A number of companies are 
either building better schools than the public revenues can 
afford, or supplementing the salaries of teachers, or pro- 
viding more equipment. A list shown me by the State 
Department of Education contains the names of thirty-one 
companies that are doing one or more of these things, 
and there are others not on the list. 

Business policy, as well as humane impulse, suggests 
this provision for comfort and welfare. This is frankly 
admitted by many operators. Said J. M. Vest, president 
and general manager of the Rum Creek Collieries Com- 
pany, recently: 

[34] 



"We don't mean to convey the idea that we are more 
altruistic, or have more generosity than any other group 
of employers. We are doing this as a business policy, 
and feel that that is enough. There is a great deal of 
competition for labor, and we try to do everything pos- 
sible to make our men contented and satisfied in order 
to keep them. A lot of this welfare work is done with 
that object in view. We think that it is good business." 

Special attention has been given to provisions of this 
sort by many non-union employers. They are trying to 
make physical conditions so attractive that the union will 
have greater difficulty in appealing to their men. Let us 
now look at camps of a different description. 



[35] 



IV 



SOME BAD MINING CAMPS 



The conditions under which men live affect their outlook 
upon life. Dreariness and discomfort are likely to pro- 
duce discontent. For this reason the conditions under 
which miners and their families live in West Virginia 
have an important bearing upon the industrial situation 
in that state. It is quite possible that the desire for 
unionism among the men may be traceable, in part, to the 
physical aspects of their existence. There is no attempt 
in these chapters to establish the contention that conditions 
are worse in either the union or the non-union camps than 
they are in the other; both good and bad conditions are 
found in each. What is suggested is that the physical 
aspects of existence may have a psychological effect favor- 
able to the idea of unionism. 

Let us go now to two of the mines of the Kanawha 
and Hocking Coal and Coke Company, in Fayette County. 
We shall have to leave the main lines of travel and trudge 
back some distance into the hills. Getting off the Ka- 
nawha & Michigan Railroad at Smithers, we walk along 
a spur of track a mile and a half to Carbondale. Car- 
bondale lies at the entrance to " National Hollo w," a 
narrow creek bottom between two hills. The hollow is 
about two miles long. It consists only of the bed of the 
creek, which is stony and unattractive, the railroad track 
and straggling rows of miners' houses. Coal has been 
mined here for twenty years. 

[36] 



We shall have to "walk the ties" up the hollow. Our 
first impression is one of barrenness. Here there has 
been no attempt to make things attractive. Stones and 
dirt strike the eye at every point ; the surface of the earth 
seems to be stripped to the skin. There are no sidewalks; 
the only firm place for human feet is the railroad track. 
When it rains the hollow is a stretch of mud. 

The houses are thrust up wherever a place can be 
found for them. Some stand between the railroad and 
the bed of the creek; some stand at the base of the hills, 
the ground rising almost from their rear doors. The 
railroad track is the front yard of many of these houses. 
We could touch some of them with a ten-foot pole without 
leaving the tracks. 

Most of the houses have four or five small rooms; 
many are without kitchens, though the coal company is 
slowly building kitchens for some of these. The houses 
have long since lost all evidence of paint. They have a 
neglected and deteriorated look. Steps are missing, 
porches are tottering, chimneys are crumbling. 

Sanitary arrangements are of the most primitive sort, 
and soil pollution is general. Flies, too, add to the menace 
arising from such conditions. The company makes no 
effort to better the situation and even the most elementary 
precautions are entirely neglected. The prospect pre- 
sented by the hollow as we go up is a disorderly array 
of ill-kept houses, chicken coops, pig wallows, and mis- 
cellaneous outbuildings. 

Children play beside the railroad, in the creek bottom 
and in empty coal cars as we pass along. 

Presently we come to the open coke ovens. These 
stretch for 200 yards or so beside the tracks. Their long, 
low sides, made of some hard, baked substance, are only 
ten or twelve feet high. Huge beds of coal are burning 

[37] 



fiercely within. Tongues of flame shoot up over the top, 
as from a long, horizontal volcano. Smoke accompanies 
the flame, smoke in thick clouds ; gases are with it. Across 
the tracks, not a hundred feet away, stands a row of 
miners' houses. These are blackened from the soot and 
smoke of the coke ovens. As we watch, huge clouds 
of smoke envelop the houses; heavy masses of it press 
against the doors and windows. The smoke is like a 
blanket, blotting the houses from view. A moment ago 
every house in the row was plainly visible. Now all the 
houses beyond the third, not two hundred feet distant, 
are shut from sight. They are enveloped in a pall of 
smoke. 

Let us penetrate this smoke screen and go into one of 
the houses. Smoke swirls through the door as we enter. 
A woman is sitting at a sewing machine. Her husband, 
holding a baby in the corner, is hardly visible at first 
because of the darkness. The windows are opaque from 
the smoke. 

"No, we don't like it very well," says the woman in 
answer to a question. "The smoke and soot get every- 
where. They get into our bureau drawers and into our 
trunks. We can't keep them out of anything. Some- 
times it lets up for a few hours — when the wind blows 
the other way. Of course, it's no use to try to keep 
things clean. The fumes, too — sulphur fumes, they seem 
like — are choky. I don't think they do the baby much 
good. But what can we do ? All the houses in the hollow 
are full; if we don't live here, where can we live?" 

"How long have you lived here?" 

"Four years." 

Four years of this bath of grime! There are other 
families that have lived in the hollow ever since coal was 

[38] 



first mined there, twenty years ago, but fortunately there 
is only one row of open coke ovens. 

This picture, with the exception of the coke ovens 
(which, in my limited visits, I found nowhere else in 
such close proximity to houses), can be duplicated many 
times in West Virginia coal fields. At Hernshaw and 
Butler, two camps of the Marmet Coal Company, I 
found conditions almost as unattractive. There is no 
collection of garbage, and the surface privy is everywhere 
in evidence. 

As you look out of the train window, riding up the 
Guyan River Valley, through the heart of the Logan 
County coal field, you see on either side camp after camp 
in which the houses are little more than shacks to keep 
the weather out. Some of these houses are propped up 
on stilts; many of them are unpainted. It was raining 
the day I made this trip. Water stood in puddles around 
doorways and under the houses. Everywhere there was 
mud, mud of a particularly clinging variety — a mud that 
seems to be peculiar to mining towns. No attempt had 
been made, apparently to ditch the streets; throughout 
the hundred miles of this journey I saw hardly a side- 
walk. The camps looked like the temporary quarters 
of some construction gang at work far from civilization. 
Yet they are permanent residence towns. 

Consider the situation of such towns. The most au- 
thoritative study of sanitary conditions in West Vir- 
ginia mining camps that I know of is that now being 
made by the State Department of Health. The head 
of this department, Dr. R. T. Davis, is a well-informed 
and enlightened man. At his direction sanitary surveys 
have recently been completed of three counties. These 
were conducted by Dr. Dwight Lewis through a joint 
arrangement between the State Department of Health 

[39] 



and the International Health Board of the Rockefeller 
Foundation. 

In Mingo County, almost exclusively a coal mining 
county, twelve communities, with a population of 3,534, 
were studied. Of the 728 premises visited, 632, or 80 
per cent., had unsafe methods of sewage disposal. The 
privies on these premises were either open-back surface 
privies or pit closets; in either case soil pollution was a 
grave danger. There were no privies at all on thirty-four 
premises. Adequate methods of sewage disposal were 
found on sixty-five premises and cement vaults on thirty- 
one. Not a single safe closet was provided by either 
the schools or the railroad in any of these communities. 
In Logan County, where a population of 9,358 was 
studied, 89 per cent, of the privies were unsafe. They 
allowed the spread of disease either from soil pollution 
or by flies. This also is almost exclusively a coal-mining 
county. The results of this condition are what would be 
expected. In Mingo County the death rate from typhoid 
fever in 1919 was thirty; it is normally about ten in 
counties with safe closets. In Logan County the death 
rate from typhoid in 19 18-19 was twenty- two. Other 
filth-borne diseases show high rates. These facts are not 
peculiar to mining regions. Upshur County, an agricul- 
tural district, showed similar conditions. The danger is 
greater, however, in coal mining regions because of the 
greater density of the population. 

What is the conclusion? Coal mining is admittedly 
rough work. It is carried on away from the comforts of 
towns and cities. Too much might easily be expected in 
the way of conveniences. Forgetting the worst pictures, 
however, I do not see how any one can travel over the coal 
fields of West Virginia without coming to the conclusion 
that life in mining towns is essentially dreary. Even in 

[40] 



those places where the operators have supplied many of 
the comforts of life the dreariness still remains. This is 
partly the result of the monotonous aspect of the towns; 
of the simple, cheap, uniform construction; of the small- 
ness of houses and rooms; of painting all the houses in 
a town the same color; of the absence of sidewalks and 
the universal presence of mud; in a word, of the con- 
struction-camp aspect of life. It is partly the result, also, 
of lack of comforts; of the necessity of getting all of 
your water from a well in the street, perhaps a block 
away; of the necessity of keeping coal-burning grates 
going all winter long if you are to be warm. Finally, it 
is the result, in part, of the lack of amusements. Beyond 
a movie theatre, a pool room and the gossip around the 
company store, the pleasures of the mining camp are not 
many. 

One hears much about the tendency of miners to-day to 
move from one part of the field to another, and also about 
their "ungratefulness." When he considers the general 
quality of life in a mining town, however, such things 
do not seem so strange. It is a general trait of human 
nature to try to find more comforts and "a better place 
to live in." Possibly the miners are merely exemplifying 
this trait. 



[41] 



V 

WHY THE FIGHT IS SO INTENSE 

What are some of the reasons for the intensity of the 
fight over unionism in West Virginia? In the first place, 
it is in the nature of a last ditch fight. Not only is West 
Virginia herself more than half organized, but the bitu- 
minous coal fields throughout the country are largely 
organized. Coal is mined in more than twenty States. 
The principal unorganized fields are the Connellsville sec- 
tion in Pennsylvania; another strip along the Allegheny 
River; Utah; and the non-union parts of West Virginia. 
Partial organization exists in several other areas. On 
the other hand, such large coal-producing States as Ohio, 
Indiana, and Illinois are completely organized. Extensive 
if not thorough organization exists in Maryland, Iowa, 
Kansas, Tennessee, Michigan, and other places. 

Of the approximately 650,000 bituminous mine workers 
in the country some 550,000 are members of the union. 
It will thus be seen that the winning of the unorganized 
fields is the final stage in the growth of the union, which 
was established in 1890. To the operators the exclusion 
of the union from these fields is the only hope of pre- 
venting it from forcing wage agreements upon the entire 
industry. 

Local unions appeared in West Virginia as early as 
1894. No real strength was attained, however, until 
191 7. On January 1 of that year the United Mine 
Workers of America had 6,000 members in the State. 

[42] 



1 



To-day it claims 53,000. The total number of mine 
workers in the State is not far below 100,000, so that 
there are between 40,000 and 45,000 who are not members 
of the union. Since these comprise nearly half of all 
the unorganized bituminous workers in the country, the 
strategic importance of West Virginia as a place for 
making a final stand against unionism is evident. 

There are other factors that contribute to the intensity 
of the situation. West Virginia is the Eldorado of the 
soft coal industry. Her mines are among the richest in 
the world. The seams of coal are thick, impurities are 
relatively absent, and the coal can almost always be got 
at by direct entrances into the sides of the hills, instead 
of by shafts. The variety of coals is large. 

These natural advantages have enabled West Virginia 
operators to produce coal both more cheaply and more 
easily than it can be produced in many other places. They 
have been eager to use this advantage to build up a 
wide market and to secure as large a return on their 
investment as possible. On the other hand, her geograph- 
ical location has been against her. On the east and north 
she is surrounded by the coal fields of Pennsylvania and 
on the north and west by Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. 
Thus her operators have been at a disadvantage in reach- 
ing the large markets of New England, New York, the 
Great Lakes, and other industrial areas. 

Realizing the superiority of their coal and their dis- 
advantage in relation to the markets, her operators have 
been impatient of anything that seemed like interference. 
They have naturally wanted to conduct their business in 
such a way as to secure the greatest benefit from their 
peculiar situation. To them the coming of unionism has 
seemed an interference. They have been averse to tying 
themselves up to agreements concerning wages, hours, the 

[43] 



A 



weighing of coal as mined, payment by the ton instead 
of by the car, and various other items that might hamper 
them. They have seen in the union, too, the prospective 
cause of many petty strikes and bickerings. 

The operators of two counties, when applying recently 
for an injunction against union representatives, frankly 
declared that if their mines should be organized "the hours 
of labor would be so shortened, interruptions in the pro- 
duction of coal by lockouts and strikes would be so ordered, 
and the price per ton for the production of coal so in- 
creased that the great natural advantages" of the non- 
union mines in West Virginia "would be artificially over- 
come." 

Meanwhile interesting history has been in the making 
in nearby States. Ever since 1884 operators in what is 
known as the central competitive field, comprising western 
Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, have been com- 
plaining that their markets were being taken away from 
them by West Virginia coal. These operators are work- 
ing almost solidly under agreements with the United 
Mine Workers of America. In the annual conferences 
between them and the union they have complained that 
they were being beaten "by competition from unorganized 
fields." They have insisted, therefore, that it was the 
duty of the union to protect them by organizing the non- 
union fields. They have intimated that their own recog- 
nition of the union implied a virtual obligation on its part 
to extend its organization everywhere, so that all States 
should be upon as equal a basis as possible. 

The union has, of course, tried to organize West Vir- 
ginia. When it failed the operators have taunted it 
with not making sufficient effort. To this the union 
has answered that the operators had it in their power 
to help it. The union has even suggested that the opera- 

[44] 



tors did not want West Virginia organized, since the 
existence of a large unorganized field might help to keep 
wages and working conditions everywhere down. 

In all this bickering the West Virginia operators have 
seen a conspiracy against themselves. They have believed 
that they were being made the victims of a combination 
between the union and the operators of Ohio, Indiana, 
and Illinois to drive them out of business by organizing 
their mines. The operators bringing the injunction suit 
just referred to specifically declared that the purpose of 
this "unlawful combination and conspiracy" was to "ex- 
clude and drive out of the markets all coal produced, 
loaded, and shipped by said non-union mines, including 
those of plaintiffs.' ' 

The union has answered this contention by saying that 
its purpose in trying to organize the mines of West Vir- 
ginia was perfectly legitimate. It has sought, it says, 
only to raise wages and improve working conditions. 
And it has supported this declaration by pointing out 
that those parts of West Virginia now unorganized, far 
from being driven out of business, are prosperous and 
finding a market for all the coal they can produce. 

The operators of West Virginia object also to the closed 
shop feature of the United Mine Workers of America. 
They insist that employees should have the right of indi- 
vidual contract. And they object to collecting union 
dues by the "check-off" system — that is, by holding these 
dues out of each man's wages and then turning them over 
to the union later. 

The union answers that the closed shop is the most 
effective form of union organization and that it is by 
this means that it has built up its present strength. It 
says that the operators have a closed shop policy of their 
own — namely, that of a closed non-union shop — and that 

[45] 



they refuse to let men work for them who are members 
of the union. It says that the "check-off" system is not 
its own invention, but that that (as we have seen) is the 
method by which the operators collect their own rent, 
store accounts and other items from the miner, and that 
the union has merely adapted a scheme devised by the 
operators to its own use. 

Such are some of the factors lying behind the intensity 
of the West Virginia conflict. 



[46] 



VI 



EVICTIONS AND INSECURITY OF RESIDENCE 

Let us now come to the real story of the West Virginia 
struggle. 

Back of an innocent-looking court action lies a question 
of grave importance to the miners and to the public gen- 
erally. This question has to do with the security or non- 
security of residence enjoyed by one-fourth of the adult 
males in the state and the entire labor force in the great 
basic industry of coal mining. 

The question may be stated thus: 

Is it desirable that the 100,000 coal miners of West Vir- 
ginia should have homes in which they may enjoy some 
security of residence? Is it important that they and their 
families should be protected against eviction almost over- 
night ? Is this a matter of interest to the coal industry of 
West Virginia only, or is it of general public concern ? 

These questions, like most questions, have an obverse 
side. This side may be put in this way : 

Is it desirable that coal-mining companies of West Vir- 
ginia should have control over the occupancy of miners' 
houses owned by them ? How else can they be sure of an 
adequate and willing labor force? Is it necessary that 
they should be free to remove families summarily?, 

These questions have been raised in their most acute 
form in Mingo County, where a strike was called in July, 
1920, by the United Mine Workers of America. That 

[47] 



strike has furnished the chief news items about West Vir- 
ginia for the daily papers. In the spring of last year 
the United Mine Workers undertook to organize Mingo 
County. It sent representatives there to make speeches 
and to visit the workers. Within two months many locals 
had been formed and several thousand members secured. 

The operators watched this effort with interest for a 
while. Then they began to discharge men who had joined 
the union. Several miners' families were forcibly put 
out of their homes; their household goods were thrown 
into the street. The Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency was 
called upon to make these evictions. The evictors were 
armed. 

The whole country knows what followed. After seven 
families at the camp of the Stone Mountain Coal Cor- 
poration had been ejected, the thirteen Baldwin-Felts men 
who had done the work were waiting for their train at the 
railroad station in the little town of Matewan. Many of 
the townspeople were around. A dispute arose over the 
attempt of Albert Felts, the leader of the Baldwin-Felts 
men, to arrest the Matewan chief of police, Sid Hatfield. 

Shooting started. When it was over, ten people lay 
dead. Seven of these were Baldwin-Felts men, one was 
Mayor Testerman, and two were miners. 

The operators saw, therefore, that forcible evictions 
were dangerous. The temper of the people was such that 
they could not be depended upon to stand idly by and 
watch the evictors proceed with their work. So the oper- 
ators turned to the law in their effort to recover posses- 
sion of their houses. They brought suits in "unlawful 
entry and detainer,' ' the purpose of which was to establish 
their right to put out men working for them, without 
notice. 

A test case, that of the Wilhelmina Coal Company 

[48] 



against B. H. Young, was first tried. The theory on 
which the company sought to put Young out was this: 
That the relationship existing between it and its em- 
ployee in respect to his occupancy of a house was one of 
master and servant, not one of landlord and tenant. The 
employee's use of the house, it was argued, was entirely 
incidental to his employment — was, indeed, part of the 
consideration paid him for his employment. His right 
to live in the house ceased the moment he was deprived 
of his job. If he remained after that, he became a tres- 
passer. 

Under the West Virginia law, if the relation were one 
of landlord and tenant the miner would be entitled to 
notice that he must vacate. If he paid rent by the week, he 
would be entitled to a week's notice; if by the month, to 
a month's notice; and if by the year, to three months' 
notice. The significance of the contention was, therefore, 
apparent. 

The defendant, through his attorneys, who were em- 
ployed by the United Mine Workers of America, argued 
that the relationship was one of landlord and tenant. It 
was pointed out that the miner paid a fixed rent for his 
house — whatever the company charged ; that the company 
collected this rent every pay day, usually once a fortnight ; 
and that, therefore, the miner — in this instance B. H. 
Young — was entitled to two weeks' notice. 

The local judge in Mingo County, Judge Damron, di- 
rected the jury to find for the plaintiff. The defendant's 
attorney thereupon sought a writ of error from the Su- 
preme Court of Appeals of West Virginia. This writ 
was denied. The effect of this denial was to hold either 
that the relation was one of master and servant, or that no 
periodical tenancy existed and that the miner was not 
entitled to any notice that he must vacate. 

[49] 



The companies did not rest with this decision, however. 
They sought an injunction, whereby large numbers of 
their employees might be put out of their houses at once, 
without going through an action of "unlawful entry and 
detainer" in each instance. The Red Jacket, Jr., Coal 
Company tried to get such an injunction against six or 
eight of its employees. The Supreme Court of Appeals 
denied the application, saying, informally, that the method 
of "unlawful entry and detainer" was adequate. 

This account was verified for me by attorneys for both 
the coal companies and the miners. Under the court's 
ruling hundreds of miners left their houses. Tent colonies 
were established for their maintenance; six or eight of 
these tent colonies existed for months. Some operators 
exhibited a humane spirit and did not compel their miners 
to leave their houses. 

It is evident that important questions are involved here. 
The coal companies are faced with a real problem in re- 
gard to the occupancy of houses owned by them. They 
have no other places in which their employees can live. 
If they cannot exercise control over the persons who 
occupy their houses, they may find themselves without an 
adequate labor force. Since the primary purpose of the 
companies is to produce coal, they evidently have a vital 
interest in the questions at stake. 

On the other hand, a serious situation exists when the 
entire labor force of a basic industry has no security of 
residence. Possibilities of great abuse exist in this situa- 
tion. The coal companies can, if they desire, render large 
numbers of people shelterless almost over night. They 
can do this regardless of the illness of members of these 
families, or of their ability to find homes elsewhere. The 
very existence of such power even if it be sparingly used is 
a threat. 

[50] 



The union insists, further, that a condition very much 
like serfdom is established by this decision. It says that 
not only has the miner no domiciliary right that the coal 
company cannot overcome by the mere act of discharging 
him, but that he can acquire none, since the coal com- 
pany's ownership of all land prevents him from buying a 
house. It points out that the conception of master and 
servant used in the coal company's argument arose at a 
time when "servants" were not freemen. They could 
not vote and were persons of very inferior status. They 
were, for the most part, house servants or farm servants. 
To apply that conception now to the workers in a great 
American industry is, the union contends, to turn back 
the clock of civilization centuries. 

Finally, of course, the union sees in this power a weapon 
of great effectiveness against the right of men to bargain 
collectively with their employers. 

Here are matters for the American people to think 
about. What is the solution? 



[5i] 



VII 

DEPUTY SHERIFFS IN THE PAY OF OPERATORS 

In the first chapter I charged that the conflict is being 
fought, in part, through the control of public officials. 
The evidence in regard to this incontrovertible. It is to be 
found in the frank statements of coal operators themselves. 

Some time ago Governor John J. Cornwell appointed a 
commission to investigate conditions in Logan County. 
This is one of the counties where the fight is most intense. 
The commission sat for several weeks and took more than 
six hundred pages of testimony. It found that the treas- 
urer of the Logan County Coal Operators' Association, 
Mr. C. W. Jones, paid to the sheriff of that county $32,- 
700 a year for the salaries of deputy sheriffs. These 
deputies are then stationed on various mine properties 
about the county. They perform various services for the 
operators. They are public officials, nominated by the 
sheriff and appointed by the county court; they give bond 
as required by law. Yet their salaries are paid by the opera- 
tors. They have assaulted miners who sympathized with 
the union and have run union organizers out of the country. 

Here is the commission's own summary of this arrange- 
ment: 

"At the beginning of the investigation a statement was 
made by a representative of the coal operators that no 
guards were employed in Logan County, but the deputy 
sheriffs who were complained of were regularly appointed 

[52] 



by the County Court of Logan County, and paid in part 
by the coal operators through the sheriff. 

"Later on after all the witnesses had been examined on 
behalf of the mine workers, C. W. Jones, treasurer of the 
Guyan Coal Operators' Association [another name for the 
Logan County Coal Operators' Association], testified 
that under an arrangement between the coal operators' 
association and the Sheriff of Logan County the association 
paid the Sheriff the sum of $2,725 per month [$32,700 a 
year] and in turn the Sheriff named twenty-five deputies, 
and furnished the operators on each pay day with a deputy 
to accompany the payrolls; that between pay days these 
deputies are stationed at different points in the field. 

"They are nominated by the Sheriff and appointed by 
the County Court of Logan County and give bond as 
required by statute. Jones asserted that the operators did 
not undertake to exercise supervision over these deputies, 
but dealt entirely with the Sheriff of Logan County. 

"No secret was made of this arrangement, and it was 
justified on the ground that Logan County has an area 
of approximately 400 square miles, with a population in 
excess of 60,000; the county is divided into three mag- 
isterial districts, and the police protection other than the 
deputies provided for under this agreement is the Sheriff, a 
deputy for each district, and one constable for each district." 

The deputies received other money than that paid 
through the association. Some of the operators paid them 
direct. The commission's summary continues : 

"It was shown that on Buffalo Creek there were three 
deputy sheriffs — one at Amherstdale, one at Lundale, and 
one at Three Forks. These men were paid by the coal 
company. Three deputies are located on the property of 
the Logan Mining Company — one at Earling, one at 
Dingess Run, and one at Monaville. One of these depu- 

[53] 



ties receives some additional pay from the company for 
escorting the paymaster from Logan to the mines. 

"The Island Creek Coal Company, which operates 
thirteen mines, has five deputies on its property. It was 
testified by the superintendent that the company contrib- 
uted something to their salaries as a remuneration for 
escorting the payroll, but he did not know the amount. 
The Logan Mining Company pays a deputy sheriff the 
sum of $50 per month, in addition to his regular salary, for 
the same service." 

Here, then, are the details of the arrangement. The 
income of the Logan County Coal Operators' Association, 
Mr. Jones testified, is about $100,000 a year. This rep- 
resents an assessment of a cent a ton upon the operators 
of that field. The amount paid for the service of the 
deputy sheriff therefore, is about one-third of a cent a ton 
for every ton of coal produced. 

This arrangement is in existence to-day. Mr. Jones gave 
his testimony in the fall of 19 19, but he told me in Janu- 
ary, 1 92 1, that the practice continues. The amount paid, 
he said, is the same as it was then. 

Does no one in West Virginia object to this practice? 
The commission left no doubt of its opinion. Says its 
report : 

"This practice, from a Governmental standpoint, can 
and should be condemned, on the ground that no officer 
should receive money or remuneration from any source 
other than the State or county." 

Why, then, does it continue? I tried to find out. Gov- 
ernor Cornwell told me that he was helpless to stop it. 
He condemned the arrangement, but said that Logan 
County was an autonomous, self-governing county; that 
he had no power of removal over its local officials, and 
knew of no way in which he could compel the Sheriff to 

[54] 



stop receiving this money or the operators to stop giving it. 

Governor Cornwell may be right. The fact remains, 
however, that a West Virginia law deals with this very 
matter, and to the layman appears to make such an ar- 
rangement illegal. The law was last amended in 19 13, 
following the disclosures in regard to the use of company- 
paid mine guards as deputy sheriffs after the Cabin Creek 
strike of 19 12. After specifying the manner in which 
Sheriffs, clerks, etc., may appoint their deputies, it reads: 

"But it shall not be lawful for any of the aforesaid 
officers of this State to appoint any deputy or deputies to 
act as, or perform any duties in the capacity of, guards or 
watchmen for any private individual, firm, or corporation, 
nor shall the above named officers be authorized to appoint 
any person or persons as deputy or deputies to act for or 
to represent, in any capacity, as officers of the law, any 
individual, person, firm, or corporation." This law is 
printed in Barnes's Edition 19 16, of the West Virginia 
code, Section 11, Chapter 7. 

Inasmuch as the deputy sheriffs in question are regu- 
larly nominated by the Sheriff and appointed by the 
County Court, and inasmuch as the operators of Logan 
County admit that they guard the company payrolls from 
the office to the mine, collect rents for the companies, pro- 
tect their property and perform other services, it would 
seem as if here was a case where an attempt might be 
made, at least, to invoke the law. But the statute has no 
penalty clause. It merely says that the act described 
"shall not be lawful," and stipulates no form of punish- 
ment. I discussed this phase of the matter with the Attor- 
ney General of the State, E. T. England. Mr. England 
was "not so sure," he said, that Governor Cornwell was 
right in regarding his hands as tied, but he considered the 
absence of a penalty clause as a difficulty. 

155] 



Here, again, there is an apparent remedy. The Supreme 
Court of Appeals of West Virginia declared in a recent 
case that " where a statute forbids a thing affecting the 
public but is silent as to any penalty the doing of it is in- 
dictable and punishable as at common law." Words ap- 
parently, could not be more appropriate to a situation than 
these to the situation under discussion. These, assuredly, 
are questions for courts to decide. 

It is probable that this arrangement or a similar one 
exists in other countries. Governor Cornwell gave me 
his opinion that it does. He also showed me a letter 
written by the Prosecuting Attorney of McDowell 
County, G. L. Counts, in which the statement is made 
that a man named Houchens is "a deputy sheriff and also 
an employee of Baldwin-Felts." The Prosecuting Attor- 
ney ought to know. 

The "Baldwin-Felts" referred to is the Baldwin-Felts 
Detective Agency. The headquarters of this agency are 
in Bluefield, W. Va., which is in the Pocahontas coal field, 
one of the strong anti-union fields. Thomas L. Felts, a 
partner in this agency, knows a great deal about the prac- 
tices of the coal operators, since his agency supplies many 
of them with private detectives who work in and about 
the mines. 

I called upon Mr. Felts. He told me that he had 
probably supplied twenty men who had been appointed 
deputy sheriffs of McDowell County. He gave it as his 
rough guess that there were between 150 and 250 deputy 
sheriffs in that county. It is certain that no such number 
is being paid for out of public funds. 

The mine workers of West Virginia regard the pay- 
ment of the salaries of these deputies by the operators as 
an attempt to use the agencies of government against 
them. They see in this arrangement one of the strongest 

[56] 



single factors that have so far prevented them from organ- 
izing Logan County. They believe that the operators are 
corrupting local government in their fight against 
unionism. 

The question has more than a local aspect. If one 
State will tolerate the payment of its public officials by 
private interests, another State may do so. We shall then 
find that our American conception of an even and just 
administration of public affairs is no longer tenable. The 
question for the people of West Virginia to ask them- 
selves is: Can they afford to set such an example to the 
rest of the country ? 



[57] 



VIII 

HOW THE DEPUTY SHERIFFS EARN THEIR MONEY 

How do these deputy sheriffs, whose salaries are paid by 
the coal operators and whom we discussed in the preced- 
ing chapter, earn the money that is given to them? Do 
they serve the side that pays them ? Or are they impartial 
in the industrial conflict? 

The commission appointed by Governor Cornwell 
secured ample evidence. We have already seen that they 
guard the company payrolls twice a month from the office 
to the mine. They also collect rents for the operators, 
assist in preserving order, serve warrants for the Sheriff 
and perform other duties. Some of their services grow 
properly out of their official positions. 

What else do they do? One of the witnesses before 
the commission was Wayne Curry. 

Curry is a miner. He was born in Logan County and 
worked there for thirteen years. He was fired by the 
Yuma Coal & Coke Company because, he said, the fore- 
man accused him of "talking union and getting up a 
disturbance." Curry told his experiences to tne com- 
mission. Here is the commission's summary of them : 

"Wayne Curry testified that he had been arrested five 
or six times by Don Chafin, Willie Gore, and Fult Mit- 
chell, and put in jail twice, and was told that the cause 
of his arrest was for talking union. [Gore and Mitchell 
were deputy sheriffs; Chafin was county clerk, but the 

[58] 



recognized leader of the deputy sheriffs.] On the first 
occasion he was arrested in the camp at Yuma on Friday 
and taken to the Logan jail and kept there until Saturday 
evening ; that he was not served with a warrant and never 
saw a warrant; that about a week or ten days after that 
date he started through to Coal River and was arrested by 
Fult Mitchell and two more fellows on the county road, 
coming through by Crooked Creek. He was taken to 
jail and confined from Friday until Monday morning, 
when he was released and told to get out, and if he didn't 
get out it wouldn't be good for him. He was arrested a 
third time at Yuma and taken to Logan by Mitchell, Dial, 
and Chafin [Dial was another deputy sheriff]. The 
fourth and fifth times he was arrested by Mitchell, Dial, 
and a third man whose name he did not know, and was 
taken to Logan and turned loose. He asserted that he 
did not know that he was charged with any offense and 
saw no warrant for his arrest, but that Don Chafin told 
him it would not be good for him if they caught him on 
the company's property again, and that they were going to 
throw him out." 

Curry got a team and moved out. He was asked at the 
end of his testimony if he had anything more to say. This 
colloquy took place : 

"A. I don't see why they got a right to block the county 
roads in Logan County, and keep the citizens that was 
born and raised there out. 

"Q. When was it blocked and how ? A. I was on Coal 
River one time and these fellows was guardin' that road, 
and I had to come down Coal River and through by Coal 
River, twenty-eight miles off the road." 

Elliott Hargis was another witness. Hargis had worked 
as a miner in Logan County for ten or eleven years. One 
day he attended a meeting of about fifty miners, when 

[59] 



six deputy sheriffs came in and looked the crowd over. 
Two of these called Hargis to one side and searched him 
for guns. Finding none they ordered Hargis to follow 
them. When he asked what they were going to do, one 
of the deputy sheriffs, Kenis Mounts, said : "We are goin' 
to do a plenty, by God." 

"Q. Were these two men guards [deputies] ? A. Yes, 
sir. They are guards. 'Before we get done with you it 
will be a God's plenty.' I says, all right. They took me 
down and put me in jail about 8:40 on Sunday, . . . and 
about 12:30 Don [Don Chafin] and six more of the 
guards come and got me out Sunday morning. And there 
wasn't any one there around the jail, and I thought they 
were going to do me some dirt, the way they bunched up. 
They got me out and Don got to questioning me about 
affairs that I didn't know anything about. 'Now,' he 
says, 'listen. I am going to turn you loose and if that 
noon train leaves to-morrow and you not on it you are 
going to lose your scalp. You got to get off of Guyan 
River.' I says, "I got a family here, and that is a pretty 
short space of time to give a man to get out.' 'Don't 
matter a God damn, you get off of this river on that noon 
train in the morning.' " 

Hargis went but came back. Some time later he again 
met Chafin and Joe Hatfield, riding in a Ford, and three 
more deputy sheriffs in a touring car behind them. Here 
is Hargis's story of what happened : 

"I was on the railroad and they went around me over 
on the county road; and they brought their cars into a 
cornfield, and the three deputies in the touring car stayed 
there with Don's runabout while Don and Joe Hatfield 
came down the road and met me. Don says to me, 'Been 
to Charleston?' [Charleston, the State capital, is also 
the headquarters of District 17 of the United Mine 

[60] 






Workers.] I says, 'Yes, sir.' Then he hit at me and I 
dodged, and he hit at me again and I dodged, and he hit 
at me again and I dodged. Well, these other fellows that 
was there was both deputies, and it didn't look like they 
was going to do anything and I run my hand out and 
when I did that the other fellow pulled a gun — that 
way — and then run it back down in the scabbard. And 
then one of them hit me on the side of the head with 
something. I don't know what it was, and knocked me 
down on my knees. . . . They got me down and beat 
me a while and stomped me in the head and hit me con- 
siderable, and finally Don quit. He says, 'That will do, 
Joe, let him go.' Joe, he quit, and Don says, 'Get up 
and get back down the road, and get your things out of 
here in the morning. I don't want to catch you in here 
again. If I do it is going to be worse than this/ I got 
back down the road and got my stuff and come to see 
the Governor. He was gone and I didn't get to see him." 

James Hollis testified that he had worked in a mine 
at Monitor eight or nine years. On the evening of 
September 25 he was asked about the union and on the 
next day he was discharged. On the night of the same 
day the witness was walking along the railroad on his 
way home from the company store, when he was set upon 
and beaten. He recognized the man who beat him as 
"a tall man" and "under Chafln." The witness started 
to run, when he was fired on and was shot. The bullet 
struck him on the side of the head and made a flesh 
wound. 

These are the merest excerpts from a mass of testi- 
mony. In all, twenty witnesses told stories of more or 
less similar conduct by the deputy sheriffs. 

Riley Damron, a miner, testified: 

"I have heard the deputies in that country say they 

[61] 



will never allow them to organize that field as long as 
they can get guns and ammunition to fight against them." 

A number of witnesses testified in regard to a trip up 
Guy an River, in Logan County, by a party of fifty-one 
organizers for the United Mine Workers of America. 
There was a convention of the union in Charleston at 
the time, and this trip seems to have been staged either 
as a demonstration of strength or as a means of finding 
out what would happen to the organizers if they entered 
that field. Word of their coming traveled ahead of them. 
A number of deputy sheriffs were hurriedly got together 
and boarded the train carrying the organizers at various 
points. 

J. M. Vest, president and general manager of the Rum 
Creek Collieries and By-Product Company, chartered an 
engine and two cabooses and turned them over to a jus- 
tice of the peace named Squire White. Squire White 
and a deputy sheriff, Willie Gore, took charge of this 
train, collected a posse of men, and followed the train 
carrying the organizers to the end of the railroad, where 
both trains turned around and came back. The number 
of men on the pursuing train was declared by the or- 
ganizers to be several hundred, but was probably smaller. 

Several of the organizers declared they saw machine 
guns at one or two points along the right of way, but 
all other witnesses denied this. It was admitted that the 
posse of men, containing a large number of deputy sheriffs, 
was armed. The organizers were also accused of having 
revolvers, and from the statements of a number of wit- 
nesses, who declared that guns were thrown from the 
windows of the coach in which the organizers were riding, 
as well as found in the toilet, this appears to have been 
true. 

The organizers did not alight from their train. They 

[62] 



were informed by one of the deputy sheriffs, they said, 
that they "better not let their feet touch dirt in this county 
or it would be all off with them." Thus ended the inva- 
sion by the organizers. 

To combat the testimony in regard to the activities of 
the deputy sheriffs, three deputies, Dial, Mitchell, and 
Pat Murphy, were called to appear before the commission. 
They either denied entirely the incidents previously sworn 
to or explained them in such a way as to throw responsi- 
bility upon others, usually upon the miners giving testi- 
mony. The burden of their charges against the miners 
was that several of these had been carrying guns con- 
trary to law, and that this explained any interference 
with them by the deputy sheriffs. They denied that they 
had arrested anyone without a warrant, and said that 
they had on no occasion assaulted any of those who 
testified. 

One of the deputies, Dial, admitted that the Logan 
Mining Company paid him $50 a month in addition to 
his regular salary and, when asked his duties, said: 71 
see that the law is preserved and protect their payrolls." 
Mitchell, another deputy, was asked what he would do if 
he found an admitted organizer at the home of a miner. 
He said: "I would be met up by the superintendent of 
the property, and if he deemed him unworthy and ob- 
jected to him being there, and wanted him ordered off 
the property, I would order him off the property." 

On the whole, it is abundantly evident that the deputy 
sheriffs who receive their salaries from the Logan County 
coal operators are a great asset to those operators in keep- 
ing the union out of the county and out of their mines. 



[63] 



IX 

"yellow dog" contracts 

Anti-union contracts are being used throughout a large 
part of the non-union coal fields of West Virginia to-day. 
They are called "Yellow Dog" contracts by the union. 
These contracts are iron-clad. They bind employees not 
to become members of the United Mine Workers of 
America or any other labor organization during their 
terms of employment. They bind them also not to "aid, 
encourage or approve" the formation of any such organi- 
zation. The employer agrees, on his side, to run a non- 
union mine and not to employ any member of a union. 
Many coal-mining companies claim that ioo per cent of 
their men have signed these contracts. Both old em- 
ployees and men who are seeking new jobs are expected 
to sign them. 

The use of such contracts is a part of what the non- 
union operators call their fight for the "open shop." In 
reality, the effect of the agreements is to establish a closed 
non-union shop. There are two kinds of open shop. One 
is a shop in which union and non-union men work side 
by side, without discrimination, and in which there is no 
dealing with the union. The other is a shop in which 
both union and non-union men work, but in which the 
employer does deal with the union; this is regarded as 
the real open shop by some students of labor questions. 
The railroad brotherhoods are examples of this second 
type of open shop. 

[6 4 ] 



It is evident that neither of these types of open shop 
can exist where the employees agree to renounce the union 
completely, and where the employer agrees to hire no 
members of a union. 

Here is the form of contract used by members of the 
Pocahontas Operators' Association, which embraces the 
two strongly non-union counties of Mercer and Mc- 
Dowell : 

"In order to preserve to each man the right to do 
such work as he pleases and for whom he pleases and 
the right to payment in proportion to service rendered, 
to preserve the natural and constitutional right of in- 
dividual contract, to preserve to each individual the fruits 
of his own labor, and to promote the interests of both 

parties hereto, , employer, and , employee, 

agree as follows: 

"That so long as the relation of employer and em- 
ployee exists between them the employer will not know- 
ingly employ, or keep in its employment, any member 
of the United Mine Workers of America, the I. W. W., 
or any other mine labor organization, and the employee 
will not join or belong to any such union or organiza- 
tion, and will not aid, encourage or approve the organi- 
zation thereof, it being understood that the policy of 
said company is to operate a non-union mine, and that 
it would not enter into any contract of employment 
under any other conditions; and if and when said rela- 
tion of employer and employee, at any time and under 
any circumstances, terminates, the employee agrees that 
he will not then or thereafter, in any manner molest, 
annoy or interfere with the business, customers, or 
employees of the employer, and will not aid or encourage 
any one else in so doing." 

[65] 



Contracts similar in effect are used by companies in 
Mingo County also. 

The contract quoted is ordered by the thousand copies 
and distributed by the Pocahontas Operators* Association 
to its various members. It first came into use in June, 
1920, just after the United Mine Workers of America 
had succeeded in building up a fairly strong organization 
in Mingo County, adjoining McDowell, and when the 
Pocahontas operators feared that their own field would 
be invaded by the union. W. E. E. Koepler, secretary 
of the Pocahontas Operators' Association, described to 
me what he called "the campaign to put these contracts 
over." He said that the superintendents of mines in the 
Pocahontas field "had it impressed upon them" that the 
men must be induced to sign the contracts. He said 
that individual miners who were influential with their 
fellow workers were called into the companies' offices 
and advised to sign. In this way, he said, signatures 
were readily secured. Of the 12,601 men employed 
in the field December 11 last, 86 per cent., he said, 
had signed. 

Just before the campaign to put over these contracts 
started, many men who had joined the United Mine 
Workers of America or had shown sympathy with it were 
discharged. 

The union regards these "yellow dog" contracts as a 
form of coercion by the employer. It says that they 
are designed to prevent employees from exercising their 
own wills in regard to joining the union. It says, fur- 
ther, that they are designed to prohibit the union from 
making its appeal to these men, because by doing so its 
officials might become liable to charges of trying to induce 
men to break their contracts of employment. 

Mr. Koepler was one of those chiefly responsible for 
1661 



inaugurating this form of contract. He told me that he 
secured the idea from "literature of the National Associa- 
tion for Industrial Rights, the old American Anti-Boycott 
Association." The real name of the successor to the 
American Anti-Boycott Association is the League for In- 
dustrial Rights. It maintains offices at 135 Broadway, 
New York. This league stands for the open shop. In 
its monthly magazine, Law and Labor, for July, 1920, 
it condemns the very thing that Mr. Koepler believes 
it favors. In a spirited editorial entitled "Public Policy 
and Anti-Union Contracts," it says: "To tell a red- 
blooded citizen he can not join a union while society 
holds that unions are lawful and useful but whets the 
desire to join and creates a spirit of sullen hostility which 
but awaits 'Der Tag' to join the enemies of existing in- 
stitutions." 

The use of anti-union contracts is not new in industrial 
disputes. They have been used before by coal operators. 
When the miners of the Hocking Valley in Ohio struck 
as long ago as 1884, anti-union contracts were introduced 
afterwards to break the strength of the organization that 
had been built up. 



[67] 



X. 

SUPPRESSION BY INJUNCTION 

If you are a representative of the United Mine Workers 
of America, you may not appeal to the coal miners of 
Mercer and McDowell Counties, West Virginia, to join 
your organization. You may not go into those counties 
with the message of unionism on your lips. If you are 
a mine worker in those counties you may not listen to 
an account of unionism from a representative of the union. 
You may not learn from him his reasons for thinking 
you ought to join the organization. He is not allowed 
to come to you for that purpose. Injunctions restrain 
him. 

The injunction has been an effective weapon in the 
conflict over unionism in the West Virginia coal fields. 
To-day injunctions are prohibiting representatives of the 
United Mine Workers of America from advertising, and 
even from saying, that a strike exists in a particular dis- 
trict; from appealing to the workers of two counties to 
join the union; and from appealing to the employees of 
a single company in another county to do the same thing. 
These injunctions were temporary when granted, but 
steps were promptly taken to make them permanent. 

Let us look at these injunctions for a moment. The 
two that deny union organizers the right to go into 
Mercer and McDowell counties are based upon the anti- 
union contracts described in the preceding chapter. Oper- 

[68] 



ators who had such contracts with their men said that 
no union representative could approach one of their em- 
ployees and ask him to join the union without at the 
same time trying to induce him to break his contract of 
employment; the contract specified that the employee 
would not join the union, and therefore to ask him to 
do so was to try to persuade him to violate his agreement. 
Thirty-two coal companies in McDowell County and 
fourteen in Mercer sought injunctions against the union 
representatives on this basis. 

Judge I. C. Herndon, presiding over the Circuit Court 
of Mercer County, denied the injunction sought by opera- 
tors of that county. He held that not sufficient evidence 
had been introduced to show that the union was trying 
to induce men to break their contracts, i. e., that it was 
actually trying to organize the county. The operators 
thereupon appealed to the judges of the Supreme Court 
of Appeals of the State. 

Three judges of that court, W. N. Miller, C. W. 
Lynch and Harold A. Ritz, granted the injunction. They 
granted a similar injunction to the operators of McDowell 
County. In these thirty-eight representatives of the union 
are named. They, together with their "agents, employees, 
servants and attorneys," are restrained from "inducing, or 
attempting to induce, by persuasion, threats, intimidation 
or abusive or violent language, the employees of the plain- 
tiffs, or either of them, so long as they are under contract 
of employment with the plaintiffs, to join the United 
Mine Workers of America; and from entering upon the 
grounds and premises of the plaintiffs or their mines, for 
the purpose of interfering with the employees of the 
plaintiffs in the performance of their said contracts of 
service with the plaintiffs, or in an attempt to persuade 
or coerce the said employees to breach their said contracts 

[6 9 ] 



of service with the plaintiffs, or to persuade them to join 
the United Mine Workers of America in violation of 
their contracts with the plaintiffs." 

The use of the words "persuade" and "persuasion" 
prevents the union, it will be seen, from making any kind 
of attempt to secure members among the men who work 
for these forty-six coal companies. The Red Jacket Con- 
solidated Coal and Coke Company in Mingo County has 
a similar injunction, recently granted. This was obtained 
in a Federal court, the United States District Court 
for the Southern District of West Virginia. 

A precedent for the injunctions is found in a case 
decided by the United States Supreme Court. This was 
the famous case of the Hitchman Coal and Coke Company 
against John Mitchell and other officers of the United 
Mine Workers of America. The case was started in 
1907 and decided in 191 7. Six judges of the Supreme 
Court held that contracts of employment, similar to those 
in West Virginia, entitled the plaintiff to protection 
against the organizing efforts of the United Mine 
Workers of America. 

A dissenting opinion was written, however, by Justice 
Brandeis and concurred in by Justices Holmes and Clarke. 
These Justices held that the contract "did not bind the 
employee not to join the union," but merely "to withdraw 
from plaintiff's employ if he joined the union." There- 
fore, said the opinion: "Until an employee actually joined 
the union he was not, under the contract, called upon to 
leave plaintiff's employ. There consequently would be 
no breach of contract until the employee both joined the 
union and failed to withdraw from plaintiff's employ." 

The operators of Mercer and McDowell counties be- 
lieve that they have effectively barred the union from 
their field by means of these anti-union contracts and 

[70] 



injunctions. They propose to send to jail all union rep- 
resentatives who violate the instructions laid upon them; 
for themselves they believe that the question of unionism 
is now solved. I asked a union official what the leaders 
of the United Mine Workers of America would do if 
these injunctions were made permanent. He said : "We'll 
go to jail. That is the only course left to us in the pursuit 
of our constitutional rights." This may solve the question 
of unionism for the operators, but it will not solve the 
question of industrial peace. 

Another injunction goes even farther than these. The 
events leading up to it are interesting. On July i, 1920, 
as we have seen, the United Mine Workers of America 
called a strike in Mingo County. The strike order hap- 
pened to apply also to a group of mines in Kentucky, 
just across the Tug River from Mingo County. These 
mines comprised what is called the Pond Creek coal field. 
The operators of both Mingo County and the Pond Creek 
field were bringing men in from the outside to work in 
their mines. The men so brought in left their trains at 
Williamson, those who were scheduled to work in Ken- 
tucky crossing the river at that point. The union was 
meeting these men through its agents and trying to per- 
suade them not to accept jobs in the strike area. 

At this juncture the Pond Creek Coal Company, a 
single company owning or leasing some 125,000 acres of 
land in the Pond Creek field, sought an injunction against 
representatives of the union. It asked that they be re- 
strained from approaching its new emp^ees. It based 
this request, in part, upon the ground that no strike ex- 
isted in the Pond Creek field and in part upon the ground 
that the union's agents were using force and intimida- 
tion to stop its men. 

The union answered that a strike did exist in the Pond 

1711 



Creek field. It said that a number of men had quit 
work there in response to the strike order. It also denied 
that any improper methods had been used in approaching 
the plaintiff's men. 

Judge Edmund Waddill, Jr., of the United States 
District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, heard 
the case. The injunction was granted. Judge Waddill 
specified that the union's agents were to be restrained, 
among other things, "from advertising, representing, stat- 
ing by word, by posted notices, or by placards displayed 
at any point in the State of West Virginia or elsewhere, 
that a strike exists in the Pond Creek field, or at plaintiff's 
mines, and from warning or notifying persons to remain 
away from said Pond Creek field or from plaintiff's 
mines; from assembling together or causing others to 
assemble together, or to assemble with others, in and 
about the railroad depot at Williamson, or in the city of 
Williamson, in such numbers and under such circum- 
stances as to make a show or appearance of force or 
opposition to the free passage of the plaintiff's agents, 
representatives and employees to and from its said mines," 
etc. 

It will thus be seen that the representatives of the 
union cannot even say that a strike exists in the Pond 
Creek field. 

I talked to several miners who declared that they had 
worked in the Pond Creek field and had quit in response 
to the strike order covering that field. They were living 
in one of the tent colonies maintained by the union for 
the relief of strikers. They said that others had quit 
also, although the order had not been as effective there 
as it had been in Mingo County. 

"We believe that this injunction goes farther than 
almost any injunction has yet gone," said Harold W. 

[72] 



Houston, attorney in West Virginia for the United Mine 
Workers of America. "If a union cannot make the 
simple statement that a strike exists in a field covered 
by an official strike order, what can it do? It is gagged 
and silenced. Picketing becomes a joke." 

The general opinion of union leaders in regard to such 
injunctions as these is well expressed in the words of T. L. 
Lewis, who as vice-president of the United Mine Workers 
of America in 1903 characterized the injunction in labor 
disputes as "the most dangerous weapon ever brought 
into existence because of its sweeping character; the most 
effective in its application because it is used in the name 
of the law; the most destructive to labor's interests be- 
cause there seems to be no appeal from the decisions of 
the individual judges who issue the injunction; the least 
expensive to the employers of labor because the official 
representatives of the Government enforce the provisions 
of the injunction. ,, 



[73] 



XI 

THE PRIVATE DETECTIVE SELF-REVEALED 

Let us see a little more closely now how some of the 
participants in the West Virginia conflict work. It will 
be remembered that ten men were killed at Matewan, 
West Virginia, in May, 1920, after armed agents of the 
Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency had evicted miners irom 
houses owned by the Stone Mountain Coal Corporation. 
Seven of these ten were Baldwin-Felts men themselves, 
one was Mayor Testerman, of Matewan, and two were 
miners. The leader of the Baldwin-Felts men, Albert 
C. Felts, was killed. 

I want to publish here some notes and memoranda de- 
clared to have been taken from the body of Albert C. 
Felts a few minutes after he was killed. They are 
declared to have been taken from his body by Sid Hat- 
field, chief of police of Matewan, who was in the thick 
of the Matewan shooting. The documents purport to 
outline a plan to hire, or otherwise divert, two officials of 
the little town, Mayor Testerman and Sid Hatfield, who 
were apparently believed to have shown friendliness for 
the miners. Charges were apparently to be found against 
them; they were then to be sent to jail or otherwise put 
out of the way. The notes say that when these things 
are done "we will have the union broke up" and "things 
going our way." 

The notes, if genuine, show also that an attempt was 
planned to win the sheriff of Mingo County, Sheriff 
Blankenship, over to the side of those opposed to the 

174] 



union. One of the documents is a list of the names and 
addresses of twelve men who seem to be private detectives 
in the employ of coal operators or the Baldwin-Felts 
agency. The notes further indicate that newspaper ar- 
ticles justifying the evictions of miners were to be printed. 

Albert C. Felts, from whose body these are said to 
have been taken, was a brother of Thomas L. Felts, part- 
ner in the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency. The head- 
quarters of Thomas L. Felts are in Bluefield, W. Va., 
where he regularly supplies private detectives to coal oper- 
ators and other persons. 

Here is one of the notes: 

"Bluefield, W. Va., May 18, 1920. 

"Albert, you must arrange things with the Mayor and 
Police Hatfield about getting our guns in there. We got 
to do something with Police Hatfield and Mayor Tes- 
terman. If we can't pay them to help us we will have 
to use other means to get them out of the way. You 
can find some charges against them and put them out 
of the way, and if any miners around put them out of 
the way, too, then that will show the rest where to 
head in. 

"We will have things going our way after you do 
this. We will have the union broke up. But we will 
never break it until we do something with Police Hatfield 
and Mayor Testerman, and if possible Sheriff Blankin- 
ship. Then we will have things going easy. Be sure 
you do this before you leave Matewan. [The thirteen 
Baldwin-Felts men came to Matewan next day.] 

"You see Mr. P. J. Smith, F. A. Lindsey, and Mr. 
Cummins while you got your men there and do like I 
tell you before you leave Matewan and then we will have 
things going our way. T." 

[75] 



P. J. Smith is the name of the superintendent of the 
Stone Mountain Coal Corporation, whose employees were 
evicted the day following the date of this note, and the 
name of the superintendent of the Red Jacket Consoli- 
dated Coal and Coke Company at Red Jacket is William 
N. Cummins. 

One of the other papers is in the form of an unsigned 
memorandum of instructions. It reads: 

"Memorandum: <<May I3 ' I92 °' 

"Make arrangements with party at Matewan and em- 
ploy him at a salary from two to three hundred dollars 
per month. I think you can make the arrangement for 
$200. Whatever arrangement you make must be under 
cover and have this understood with Hatfield. If you 
make a deal with him I think you should suggest some 
means of bringing about a controversy or misunderstand- 
ing of some sort which will result in a split between 
him and the bunch which would look plausible and 
give him an opportunity of turning against them and tell- 
ing them where to head in, because that is what we will 
expect if we make a deal. 

"Now, I do not want him to be neutral except during 
the interval before this misunderstanding and complica- 
tions are brought about, and after that we will expect 
him to stand squarely behind us in all matters which 
may come up and let everybody know that he has become 
disgusted with the bunch and wants nothing more to do 
with them and brand them as crooked and declare him- 
self with the other side when it comes to a show down. 
However, I want to impress upon him the importance of 
not letting any one know there is any arrangement be- 
tween us. His pay will be given to him in person by 

[76] 



yourself or one of our confidential men and no one should 
be taken into his confidence about this. 

"I would also suggest that you show Anse Hatfield 
a little attention and let him know that we appreciate 
the attitude which he has taken in these matters. 

[Anse Hatfield, relative of Sid Hatfield, was reported 
to have sympathies differing from those of the Chief of 
Police. He was later shot and killed as he sat in front 
of the hotel that he owned in Matewan.] 

" Please do not forget our conversation on the subject 
of Chambers. However, I would suggest that you have 
a further talk with Mr. Bausewine [George Bausewine, 
Jr., is secretary of the Williamson Coal Operators' Asso- 
ciation, which includes the operators of Mingo County] 
before you approach him, and have a thorough under- 
standing with the committee, because there is no use going 
into this matter at all unless you know where you are. 

"At our conference in Cincinnati a few days ago it 
was suggested that we keep after Blankenship [the Sheriff 
of Mingo County], as they seem to think he might be 
worked yet; however, I am of the opinion the other par- 
ties have him under their control. . . . [Then follows 
a paragraph emphasizing the importance of "getting a 
square deal from the press."] 

"I do not think it would be a bad idea to have an 
article written setting forth the views of the operators 
in connection with these evictions, etc., and the precedent 
which has been established, and go on and analyze it 
and show that they had to take this action because these 
fellows [miners occupying company-owned houses] would 
hold the houses indefinitely and occupy them for the 
purpose of annoying the company and preventing their 
mining coal; that the houses were a part of their mining 
equipment, etc. 

[77] 



"Furthermore, that if this is not done, the public is 
going to get a wrong conception of what has been done 
and the object of doing it, because these things are being 
talked throughout the country, on the trains and public 
places, etc. 

"Arrange with Cunningham to discontinue the room 
at Williamson." 

The list of persons who are apparently private detectives 
furnished by the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency to oper- 
ators contains twelve names. Each man is given a num- 
ber, by which he is apparently known. Some are de- 
scribed as having been "in our service" only a few months, 
others many years. They are spoken of as "working in 
the mines/' "canvassing the field" or stationed at various 
points about the county. The names of several coal com- 
panies for whom they work are given. 

That one of the men may have been an "under-cover 
man" — that is, may have joined the union while he was 
a detective and have tried to get information about it 
from the inside — is indicated by the following descrip- 
tion: 

"No. 10, , has been working for the Red 

Jacket Coal and Coke Company at Red Jacket, but when 
they began organizing at Matewan he went down with 
the Red Jacket bunch and joined, afterwards was fired 
and is now laying out, picking up all information he can 
among the union men. His address is Matewan, W. Va. 
Has been in our service about a year and no one knows 
him." 

Obviously it is impossible to vouch for the genuineness 
of these documents beyond question. Ed Chambers, a 
resident of Matewan, swore in an affidavit that he saw 
Hatfield take these papers off Felts's body twenty minutes 

[78] 



after Felts was killed. The prosecuting attorney of 
Mingo County was said, while I was there, to have 
copies of these notes in his possession. I went to him. 
He said that papers reported to have been taken from 
Felts's body were locked in his safe at that moment. 
He refused to let me see them or to say anything in 
regard to their contents or authenticity. When he learned 
that what purported to be copies of these notes were in 
my possession he expressed surprise. The evidence of their 
authenticity is strong and, so far as I know, has not been 
denied. 

The documents fit with much precision into the West 
Virginia industrial conflict. They give a picture of events 
and relationships that loom prominently in the foreground 
of that struggle. Even if their authenticity is doubtful, 
they are of valid interest to the public. They show the 
kind of thing that goes on where a bitter industrial con- 
flict occurs, and they are a vivid illustration of the raw 
material on which the state of mind of the miners feeds. 

It is, of course, well known that the Baldwin-Felts 
Detective Agency supplies individual operators and asso- 
ciations of operators with "secret service men" and pri- 
vate detectives. Indeed, the secretaries of two associa- 
tions admitted to me that their organizations had con- 
tracts with this agency. These secretaries were George 
Bausewine, Jr., secretary of the Williamson Operators' 
Association, who is referred to in the memorandum quoted 
above, and W. E. E. Koepler, secretary of the Poca- 
hontas Operators' Association. Both asserted that these 
detectives protect the interests of the companies employing 
them and engage in the legitimate uncovering of crime. 
Mr. Bausewine added: "We want to know what our 
men are doing, what they're talking about. We want 
to know whether they're talking union or not." 

[79] 



XII 

TYPES OF NON-UNION OPERATORS 

Of what type are the owners and managers of coal mines 
who are opposed to collective bargaining in West Virginia ? 
At bottom, coal operators, just like union leaders and 
other people, are to be explained in the light of their eco- 
nomic backgrounds and their own experience. They have 
capital heavily invested in coal, or they administer the 
capital of others. They are primarily interested in the 
production of coal, and whatever does not contribute to 
that end tends to become of secondary importance to 
them. 

Let us consider first the man who regards himself 
as the big brother or the father of his employees. He 
takes a genuine and paternal interest in providing good 
houses, sanitation, safe working conditions, and a variety 
of amusements for them and their families. He believes 
that the things that affect their feelings affect his also. 
"I live with my people," said an operator recently. "When 
they rejoice, I rejoice with them ; and when they are sor- 
rowful, I join their sorrows." The operator of this type 
believes that he is capable — and frequently he is capable — 
of going a long way in understanding the moods and 
desires of the men who work for him. 

Such an operator sometimes performs acts of especial 
considerateness. Last December, when several hundred 

[80] 



striking miners were living in tents because they had been 
compelled to vacate company houses, and snow descended 
upon their floorless shelters, an operator who had himself 
suffered from the strike visited one of the tent colonies 
and invited strikers and their families to move into his 
vacant houses. A union leader spoke to me of this with 
great appreciation. Other operators permitted their men, 
though on strike and producing nothing, to remain in 
company houses for months without paying rent. 

This capacity for sympathy is sometimes linked with 
an attitude that seems hardly compatible with it. This 
attitude appears to be based upon a military conception 
of industry. It has something of the essence of discipline 
about it. "My mine is a ship," said one operator who 
was proud of the clean surroundings and comfortable 
living quarters of his employees. "I am its captain. My 
superintendent is the officer on deck. I expect my orders 
to be obeyed." This conception of miners as seamen, 
whose first virtue is obedience, is likely to meet with 
difficulties when the seamen come to regard mutiny, in 
the form of joining a labor union, as their constitutional 
right. 

An operator often met is he who believes that his men 
do not want to join a union. He believes that he is doing 
all for his men that any reasonable person can ask — 
more than can justly be expected. He regards their in- 
terests as identical with his own. He sees the union 
as a meddling and interfering agency. "Not 5 per cent, 
of the men in Logan County would join the union if 
its organizers came in here," says J. J. Ross, general 
manager of the Logan Mining Company. "Fifty per 
cent, of the men on Buffalo Creek would leave if the 
union came in there," says George M. Jones, general 
manager of three mining companies. 

[81] 



The operator of this type knows that his own office 
door is always open. He is always ready to hear com- 
plaints. He thinks that his men are perfectly free and 
willing to tell him that they consider themselves under- 
paid or that conditions in the mine are unsafe. He can- 
not imagine why they should want any other method of 
appeal. I have traveled through mines with operators 
who stopped individual workmen and asked them whether 
the coal was "coming well" that day. The half-muttered 
replies of these men, as they rose from their bent tasks 
and turned their grime-soaked faces toward us; their as- 
surances, in answer to questions, that coal was being cut 
promptly for them, that the supply of cars was steady, 
that wages were good and that they were "satisfied" — 
these were received by their employers as convincing evi- 
dence that all was well. No suspicion, apparently, that 
reticence might be at the bottom of this seeming compla- 
cency entered their minds. It did not occur to them 
that, in a locality where discontent was evidence of dis- 
loyalty and any suggestion of union sympathy was ground 
for discharge, men might not speak their thoughts plainly 
or in the presence of strangers. 

Different from the employer who lives among his men 
and feels with them is the employer who sees nothing but 
the production of coal. Such a man is not likely to admit 
the importance of sanitation or comfortable homes; he is 
engrossed in the technical and commercial aspects of his 
enterprise. A new machine for cutting coal crowds out 
of his mind all matters of human welfare. Perhaps his 
coal lands are owned in New York or Philadelphia, and 
the stockholders never come near the mine; they ask him 
no questions and he volunteers no information. Such 
employers are not peculiar, of course, to the coal mining 
industry in West Virginia ; they are to be found wherever 

[82] 



men engage in the arduous occupation of making money. 

It is only a step from the man who believes that his 
employees do not want the union to the man who will 
go to any length to protect himself and them from it. 
Many employers who are to-day using the anti-union con- 
tract, the injunction, the private detective, the deputy 
sheriff paid from private funds, and the power of dis- 
charge and eviction to keep union organizers away, are 
doing so in the belief that they are upholding a principle 
of American democracy. This principle, as they see it, is 
the right of every man to work for whom he pleases and 
under conditions chosen by himself. That these employers 
do not see the coercive power of the very measures to 
which they are resorting is one of the remarkable things 
about their whole point of view. 

Many employers, of course, are less ingenuous about 
the matter. They are out to crush unionism at any cost. 
If they trample on the rights of others in so doing, they 
are not particularly concerned. 

Finally, there is the operator who cannot discuss union- 
ism without seeing red, and who regards the United Mine 
Workers of America as a criminal organization. An oper- 
ator, not himself pronouncedly of this type, but reflecting 
for the moment this point of view, said recently: "The 
unions as we hear of them to-day . . . are in control of 
radicals, I. W. W.'s, and Bolshevists, men who are not 
in sympathy with American ideals. They are seeking 
to destroy American industry. . . . These unions are not 
controlled by substantial, law abiding, God-fearing men. 
They are men who are against this Government, against 
American principles, against schools, against churches, 
against everything that this country stands for. When 
they come in, do they come in through the schools and 
through the churches? No! They come in armed with 

[83] 



rifles, armed with pistols and knives; they come in to in- 
timidate the people." 

Such statements are all too frequent in the West Vir- 
ginia coal fields to-day. The hope of industrial peace lies 
in a more reasoned point of view. 



[84] 



XIII 

THE UNION — ITS LEADERS AND PURPOSES 

The personalities of the union leaders play an important 
part in the conflict over unionism in the West Virginia 
coal fields. So also do the objects of the union, as stated 
in its constitution. 

C. F. Keeney is president of District 17 of the United 
Mine Workers of America. He is leader of the union 
forces. His district comprises the major part of the coal 
fields of the State, including those sections in which the 
fight between non-union operators and the union is most 
intense. 

Keeney is the embodiment of the union's spirit and 
purpose in West Virginia. He controls policies and 
makes decisions. His actual power is limited, of course, 
by the constitution and by the national officers. Locally, 
too, there are checks upon his authority; he is not by 
any means an autocrat. But it is his personality that 
counts most. He is identified by the operators with all 
that they distrust in unionism. Nearly everything that 
the union has won in West Virginia has been won under 
his leadership; he is the general who is now trying to 
extend the organization to every mine in the State. 

There is a suggestion of the tiger in Keeney's person- 
ality. He seems always ready to spring. This impres- 
sion contains nothing soft or catlike, but the force and 
alert watchfulness of the tiger are there. He is con- 

[85] 



stantly trying to figure out your next move while you 
talk to him. A vehement nature seems gathering itself 
to reply; you feel in danger of being seized and torn. 
Keeney is direct rather than subtle. His speech, like his 
manner, is impetuous. Words roll out of his mouth in 
torrents; they pile up on themselves. If he were a large 
man the effect would be Niagara-like. 

He is not an outsider in the West Virginia conflict. 
He is not one of those imported trouble makers" whom 
the coal operators whose lands are owned in Philadelphia, 
New York, and Cleveland like to talk about. He was 
born and brought up in West Virginia. He married the 
daughter of a West Virginia miner. His six children 
are being educated in the State. 

Keeney has worked in the mines. He knows what ven- 
tilation, robbing, roof conditions, safety appliances, yard- 
age, break-throughs and spraggers mean. He went to 
work in the mines as a boy. He worked in them for 
nineteen years until he was thirty-two. To-day, at thirty- 
six, he looks back upon this experience with a grim sense 
of what coal mining has meant for him. 

He was at work in Cabin Creek when the United 
Mine Workers of America got its first foothold there in 
1903. He saw the operators open their fight next year 
to crush the union. He saw 700 families put out 
of their houses into the snow. He saw the union broken. 
He saw the miners denied the right to organize. The 
union did not come back for eight years. Keeney be- 
came vindictive. He became a Socialist. 

He was still at work in Cabin Creek when the union 
tried to re-establish itself there in 1912. He saw the 
armed guards of the operators fight with the miners. 
He saw blood shed. Keeney 's father-in-law was fired 
for being a union sympathizer. Keeney was fired also. 

[86] 



He was the second man, he says, called into the office 
of the Wake Forest Mining Company and told to go. 
Keeney's friends were fired. Keeney and his father-in- 
law were blacklisted. He says that his family was sick 
during much of this time. 

Keeney regards the struggle in West Virginia to-day 
as a conflict between classes. "I haven't left the class 
I was born into yet," he says, "and I hope I never will." 
He believes that he is trying to win for the miners rights 
which the operators are determined to deny. He sees 
these operators as the organized forces of wealth and 
power. Yet in one of his milder moods he said: "All 
that we want is to give men an opportunity to join the 
United Mine Workers of America, and that opportunity 
the coal companies refuse." 

Keeney has no carefully thought out philosophy of a 
class struggle, I think. His experience is his philosophy. 
He believes in unionism. And he believes in getting it 
despite opposition. Yet when 5,000 armed miners started 
to march on Logan County a year and a half ago, believ- 
ing that the coal operators there were responsible for the 
killing of women and children, Keeney came from a dis- 
tant part of the State to stop them. Governor Cornwell 
has publicly given Keeney credit for helping to avert a 
tragedy. 

"They call Keeney a radical," he says. "Who made 
him a radical? I've seen the time when I didn't have 
the right to eat in this State. I've seen the time when 
I was refused a job. I've been served with eviction papers 
and thrown out of my house. I've seen women and chil- 
dren brutally treated in mining camps. I've seen hell 
turned loose. 

"They didn't call me a radical when circular after 
circular went out from my office during the war, urging 

[87] 



miners to waive their rights and produce all the coal they 
could. 

"They didn't call me a radical when I agreed to forget 
our contracts and work for Uncle Sam. Now they call 
me a radical because I insist on holding what the miners 
of this State have gained. It is an old trick. They are 
merely trying to cover up their determination to crush us. 

"I'm a native West Virginian. There are others like 
me working in the mines here. We don't propose to 
get out of the way when a lot of capitalists from New 
York and London come down here and tell us to get off 
the earth. They played that game on the American In- 
dian. They gave him the end of a log to sit on and 
then pushed him off that. We don't propose to be 
pushed off. 

"They say we shall not organize West Virginia. They 
are mistaken. If Frank Keeney can't do it, some one 
will take his place who can. But West Virginia will 
be organized and it will be organized completely." 

As he spoke these words, my thoughts flashed back to 
the remark of a coal operator. "You may tell the union," 
he said, "that when it sends its organizers in here, I'll 
get an army." "And I'll lead it," echoed his mine super- 
intendent. 

Fred Mooney, secretary-treasurer of District 17, is 
calmer and more retiring than Keeney. I did not become 
so well acquainted with him. He is younger than Keeney 
and has a frank, open face. He looks as if he might have 
been a student under other circumstances. 

The legal adviser and attorney of District 17 is Harold 
W. Houston. Houston is not an official of the union and 
takes no direct part in its decisions. But his influence is 
strong. He is the antithesis of Keeney in many respects. 

[88] 



I got the impression that he is a good lawyer, though I 
am not qualified to judge; certainly his standing at the 
Charleston bar is high. He is past middle age and his 
hair is white, though his face is young. 

Houston seemed to me a very likeable man. He is in- 
terested in many subjects. He has traveled little and 
read much. His interest in books centres chiefly, perhaps, 
in autobiographical discourse. He keeps abreast of the 
times, however, through newspapers and magazines. 

He has a great taste for anecdotes about people who 
have interested him. We exchanged stories about Whis- 
tler, Oscar Wilde, and Walt Whitman. The subtlest 
ones pleased him most. Houston loaned me his copy of 
George Gissing's "The Private Papers of Henry Rye- 
croft," which with shame I confessed that I had not read. 
Gissing's struggle and quiet philosophy fascinated him. 
But Houston is a robust and keen-minded man. His 
usefulness to the union lies in his knowledge of the law 
and his ability to act as a restraining influence on the 
impetuosity of others. 

There is an idea among the opponents of the union 
that Houston is a Machiavellian spirit within the organi- 
zation. He is credited with being its "brains" and a 
schemer. Thomas L. Felts, partner in the Baldwin-Felts 
Detective Agency, who regards all labor unions, so far as 
I could judge, as outlaw organizations, said to me: "I 
know perfectly well that if Houston could bring it about, 
he would plan my killing." I found Houston the least 
truculent of all the men I met on either side. 

The purposes and pledge of membership of District 17 
of the United Mine Workers of America help to show 
what kind of organization it is that is trying to extend 
itself throughout the State. The purposes are defined in 

[89] 



the preamble to the constitution, which is as follows: 
"There is no fact more generally known or more widely 
believed than that without coal there would not have 
been any such grand achievements, privileges, and blessings 
as those which characterize the twentieth century civili- 
zation, and believing as we do that those whose lot it 
is to daily toil in the recesses of the earth, mining and 
putting out this coal which makes the blessings possible, 
are entitled to a fair and equitable share of the same; 
therefore we have formed 'The United Mine Workers 
of America' for the purpose of the more readily securing 
the objects sought by educating all mine workers in Amer- 
ica to realize the necessity of unity of action and purpose, 
in demanding and securing by lawful means the just 
fruits of our toil. And we hereby declare to the world 
that our objects are: 

"First — To secure an earning fully compatible with the 
dangers of our calling and the labor performed. 

"Second — To establish as speedily as possible, and for- 
ever, our right to receive pay for labor performed, in 
lawful money, and to rid ourselves of the iniquitous sys- 
tem of spending our money wherever our employers see 
fit to designate. 

"Third — To secure the introduction of any and all well- 
defined and established appliances for the preservation of 
life, health, and limbs of all mine employees. 

"Fourth — To reduce to the lowest possible minimum 
the awful catastrophes which have been sweeping our 
fellow-craftsmen to untimely graves by the thousands, by 
securing legislation looking to the most perfect system of 
ventilation, drainage, etc. 

"Fifth — To enforce existing laws; and, where none ex- 
ist, enact and enforce them ; calling for a plentiful supply 

[90] 



of suitable timber for supporting the roof, pillars, etc., 
and to have all working places rendered as free from 
water and impure air and poisonous gases as possible. 

"Sixth — To uncompromisingly demand that six hours 
shall constitute a day's work, and that not more than 
six hours shall be worked in any one day by any mine 
worker. The very nature of our employment, shut out 
from the sunlight and pure air, working by aid of artifi- 
cial light (in no instance to exceed one candle power) 
would in itself strongly indicate that, of all men, a coal 
miner has the most righteous claim to a six-hour day 
from bank to bank. 

[Eight hours is the established day's work at present 
in agreements between oerators and the union.] 

"Seventh — To provide for the education of our chil- 
dren by lawfully prohibiting their employment until they 
have attained a reasonably satisfactory education, and in 
every case until they have attained sixteen years of age. 

"Eighth — To abrogate all laws which enable coal oper- 
ators to cheat the miners, and to substitute laws which 
enable the miner, under the protection and majesty of 
the State, to have his coal properly weighed or measured, 
as the case may be. 

[Coal is not commonly weighed or measured as mined 
in non-union mines to-day; the miner is paid by the car, 
and cars vary in size.] 

"Ninth — To secure, by legislation, weekly payments in 
lawful money. 

[At present, rent, charges at the company store and 
other items are "checked off" the miner's wages; that is, 
they are withheld from him each pay day and he receives 
the balance in cash.] 

[91] 



"Tenth — To render it impossible, by legislative enact- 
ment in every State, for coal operators or corporations 
to employ Pinkerton detectives or guards, or other forces 
(except the duly elected officers of each county), to take 
armed possession of the mines in case of strikes or lock- 
outs. 

"Eleventh — To use all honorable means to maintain 
peace between ourselves and employers; adjusting all dif- 
ferences so far as possible by arbitration and conciliation, 
that strikes may become unnecessary." 

Each candidate for membership in the union is obliged 
to take an "obligation of fidelity," part of which is as 
follows : 

"That I will not reveal to any employer or boss the 
name of any one a member of our unions. That I will 
assist all members of our organization to obtain the highest 
wages possible for their work; that I will not accept a 
brother's job who is idle for advancing the interests of 
the union or seeking better remuneration for his labor; 
and, as the mine workers of the entire country are com- 
petitors in the labor world, I promise to cease work at 
any time I am called upon by the organization to do so. 

"And I further promise to help and assist all brothers 
in adversity, and to have all mine workers join the union, 
that we may all be able to enjoy the fruits of our labor; 
that I will never knowingly wrong a brother or see him 
wronged, if I can prevent it. 

"To all this I pledge my honor to observe and keep 
as long as life remains, or until I am absolved by the 
United Mine Workers of America." 

District officers are chosen by popular vote of all the 
members. Elections are held at each local mine sepa- 
rately, but all on the same day. Nomination blanks 

[92] 



are sent out in advance, and nominations are also made 
by the rank and file of the membership. Electioneering 
is barred. Any candidate found guilty of electioneering 
is forbidden by the constitution to hold office. No local 
union may send out circular letters or make a slate in 
favor of any candidate. Mr. Keeney is now serving his 
third term as president. 



[93] 



XIV 

THE UNION AND PETTY STRIKES 

A frequent charge made against the United Mine 
Workers of America by managers of coal mines in West 
Virginia is that it has no use for its pledged word. By 
this is meant that it is responsible for many petty strikes 
called at mines in violation of its agreements. These 
strikes sometimes last a day, sometimes longer. They 
cause loss of time to both the men and the coal compa- 
nies and they lead to diminished production. 

The joint agreements between union and operators 
contain provisions concerning wages, hours, pay for over- 
time, employment^ check weighmen, the company's right 
to discharge, and other matters. They specify the manner 
in which grievances shall be handled. Provision is usually 
made that no strike or stoppage of work shall occur at 
any mine until the matter in dispute has been disposed of 
in accordance with machinery described in the agreement 
itself. This machinery is not always the same, but varies 
slightly. It is thus described in the agreement with the 
Kanawha operators: 

"In case of any local trouble arising at any mine, the 
aggrieved party shall first make an earnest effort to 
adjust the dispute with the mine foreman. In case they 
are unable to agree, the matter shall be referred to the 
Mine Committee and the local management of the mine, 
and if they fail to agree, to the Commissioner of the 

[94] 



Operators' Association and the miners' officials, and if 
they fail to agree, to the District Board of the two or- 
ganizations, and should they fail to agree, they shall 
select an umpire or referee, and the decision of the ma- 
jority of them shall constitute a final and binding award. 
In all such cases all parties involved must continue at 
work pending the investigation and adjustment as above 
set forth." 

If an employee refuses to work because of a grievance 
that has not been taken up in this manner, he is subject 
to dismissal by the company. If a strike is called in 
violation of the agreement by an officer of the union, a 
fine may be assessed against every member of the union 
at that place. This fine amounts to $i a day for each 
idle day. If the operator locks the men out in violation 
of the agreement, the union may fine him $i a day for 
each employee thrown out of employment, so long as the 
mine remains idle. 

It is the contention of the operate ,_. that under this 
agreement a strike may properly be called only upon the 
expiration of a contract and before a new contract has 
been made. This does not apply, of course, to a district 
where there is no agreement but where the union may 
be trying to secure one. 

Many stoppages of work have undoubtedly occurred 
at individual mines in violation of the above agreement. 
These have caused operators loss both of time and money. 
They have led to bickering and ill feeling, and have done 
much to augment the hostility felt toward the union by 
non-union operators. These stoppages have nearly all 
been caused, however, by the irresponsible laying down 
of tools by all or a part of the workmen at a given mine, 
or by the unauthorized act of some local official of the 
union at that place. I learned of no instance in which 

[95] 



such a stoppage had been caused by the order of respon- 
sible district officers. 

The union makes a distinction between a stoppage of 
work and a strike. A strike may be called only by the 
District Executive Board, with or without the sanction 
of the International Executive Board (depending upon 
the size of the territory involved), and with the approval 
of the miners concerned. A stoppage of work, on the 
other hand, is just such an unauthorized "downing of 
tools" as has been described. The union contends that 
stoppages obviously cannot be controlled by the respon- 
sible officers, who may be many miles away, until after 
they have taken place. The most that can be done is 
to put the men back to work as quickly as possible. 

The secretary of an operators' association told me that 
sixty-three stoppages of work had occurred at the mines 
under his jurisdiction within the previous eleven months. 
He called them "strikes." They were not strikes in 
the sense of having been ordered by responsible union 
officials. They were temporary shutdowns, caused by the 
improper acts of men in the employ of the companies 
themselves — men who were, to be sure, acting as mem- 
bers of the union, but without the union's sanction. 

I repeated this figure to Mr. Keeney. The secretary 
had asked me not to reveal the identity of the association. 
Mr. Keeney guessed it, however, and he and the president 
of one of his sub-districts were able to enumerate from 
memory twenty-five such stoppages in that field within 
the period mentioned. Mr. Blizzard, the sub-district 
president, was willing to raise the number to thirty. All 
of these, Mr. Keeney insisted, were caused by the acts of 
men who had no authority to do what they did. Mr. 
Keeney said that on one occasion he had returned to his 
office and found seventeen stoppages in progress simulta- 

[96] 






neously. He put the men back to work at thirteen of 
these by telegraph, he said, and went in person to the 
other four. He said that he had caused only one strike 
to be called in his district during his four years as presi- 
dent. An International Board member had caused one 
other to be called. He declared further that he had 
cancelled twelve local charters because of improper acts 
by local officials. 

Mr. Keeney declared that many stoppages were due to 
the acts of mine superintendents themselves in violation 
of their agreements. Substantiation of this was given 
me by Mr. T. L. Lewis, secretary of the New River 
Coal Operators' Association, who said that the main 
causes of violation of agreements were three: 

"(i) The failure or refusal of both parties to under- 
stand the terms of the agreement. 

" (2) The belief by some mine managers that they could 
best serve their employers, and thereby gain favor with 
those employers, by taking advantage of specific terms in 
the agreement. 

"(3) The disposition of some miners, and especially of 
some local union officials, to believe that there was nothing 
wrong in compelling an 'employer to concede better 
wages and better working conditions than the agreement 
called for." 

Mr. Lewis placed the responsibility for most of these 
violations, however, upon the miners and their local union 
representatives. 

Undoubtedly the operators have here a substantial 
ground of complaint. No justification can be found for 
rendering men idle in violation of the joint agreements. 
I believe, however, that too few of the operators realize 
the part played by their own officials in giving a basis 
for these petty conflicts and differences. Often managers 

[97] 



and superintendents permit practices to creep in that have 
no justification under the contracts. They may even pay 
bonuses to a few men, or raise the wages of some, in 
order to get coal produced more quickly. This causes 
trouble. Those not so favored hear of what is going 
on and want the same terms applied to all. 

It is probable, also, that in places where shutdowns are 
of frequent occurrence some substantial ground of com- 
plaint exists. Where sixty-three stoppages of work occur 
in eleven months it is likely that matters are not entirely 
as they should be. The employer always has his power 
of discharge as well as of fining offending members of 
the union. Many employers told me that they overlooked 
legitimate opportunities to fine; this, they believed, de- 
stroyed the moral effect of the power they had. It would 
be better, they thought, if they used the power whenever 
they properly could. 






[98] 



XV 

VIOLENCE ON BOTH SIDES 

The charge of habitually using violent methods in the 
conflict over unionism in the West Virginia coal fields 
is one that is brought by each side against the other. Some 
operators make the extreme statement that the United 
Mine Workers of America carries on its work of organ- 
ization in that State at the point of a gun. The only sub- 
stantiation for this charge is the occasional sniping that 
goes on in strike zones, when individual miners, incensed 
at the use of strike-breakers or for some other cause, shoot 
into camps or even attack individuals. Indefensible as this 
is, it is the action of individuals in a region where force 
is too readily resorted to on both sides. 

It is true that in some places many miners are armed. 
So are many operators. How these miners got their arms 
I do not know. There is a rigid law in West Virginia 
against carrying weapons without both obtaining a license 
and giving bond. Ordinary citizens as well as miners carry 
guns in violation of this law. Mr. Keeney, president of 
District 17 of the United Mine Workers of America, told 
me two ways in which he supposed that miners had got 
their arms. One was by pooling funds and buying them 
in groups. The other was by taking them "from people 
who already had them." By this he meant taking them 
from the operators. 

[99] 



The region most heavily armed is probably Mingo 
County, where a strike has been in progress since July, 
1920. In December Sheriff Blankenship of Mingo County, 
encouraged perhaps by the presence of Federal troops, 
undertook what he called a campaign of "voluntary dis- 
armament. " Hundreds of firearms were taken from miners 
and citizens, as well as from coal companies. Sheriff 
Blankenship showed me a stack of rifles given up, he said, 
by the Red Jacket Consolidated Coal and Coke Company. 

Mingo County is not the only place where arms are to 
be found. An operator in Logan County showed me his 
"arsenal." The county authorities, he said, had recently 
purchased a number of machine guns to be in readiness for 
possible trouble. When several thousand miners gathered 
together some time ago to invade Logan County most of 
them were armed. The story of that attempted invasion 
will be told to-morrow. 

The amount of violence in Mingo County has been 
greatly exaggerated. The assistant prosecuting attorney, 
Mr. Stratton, told me that there had been twenty murders 
in Mingo County since last May; published reports three 
months ago placed the number at thirty-seven and added 
that 600 persons had been wounded. Moreover, of these 
twenty, ten were killed in a single shooting affair at 
Matewan. If those are omitted, the number is not greatly 
in excess of the average for previous years. Six indict- 
ments for murder were found in Mingo County in 191 7, 
eleven in 19 18, and five in 19 19. Not all of the violence 
in Mingo County has grown out of the conflict over union- 
ism. The killing of ten men at Matewan followed the 
eviction of miners from their houses for having joined 
the union. Of the remaining ten, Mr. Stratton said that 
five certainly had no connection with the industrial 
struggle, and possibly a sixth had not. 
[ IOO ] 



Killing is not the only form that violence takes. A cer- 
tain amount of shooting from hillsides into camps and de- 
struction of property has taken place in Mingo County. 
Several mine tipples and other buildings have been dam- 
aged. The agents of this destruction have not always been 
identified. The operators insist that the union is respon- 
sible for it. The union contends that some of it has been 
caused by the operators themselves in an effort to place 
the blame upon the union and arouse public sentiment 
against it. On one occasion bloodhounds used to trace 
the perpetrator of an explosion that had done some dam- 
age to mine buildings went straight to the home of a mine 
officer and refused to go further. My own opinion is that 
most of this damage has been the work of miners and of 
citizens who sympathize with the union. The inhabitants 
of Mingo County on the whole are friendly to the union. 

At this point it is necessary to say a word in regard to 
some of the people who live in these parts. Mingo County 
is in the heart of the West Virginia and Kentucky hill 
regions. This country was the scene thirty or forty years 
ago of bitter private feuds between families. The feuds 
have ceased, but the tradition remains. Enmities formed 
then still exist. Two months ago, when "Devil" Anse 
Hatfield, leader of the Hatfield clan in the famous Mc- 
Coy-Hatfleld feud, was buried, men wept over reconcilia- 
tions effected at his bier 

Here is in important fact in the industrial conflict now 
going on there. Many people living in these regions be- 
lieve in settling disputes by personal warfare. They are 
used to the arbitrament of force. Human life is held more 
cheaply than in some more cultivated parts of civilization. 
There are miners working in the coal mines of West Vir- 
ginia and Kentucky to-day who saw their fathers and 
grandfathers take down guns off the wall and go a hun- 
[ ioi ] 



dred yards or so from the house to lie in wait for some 
private enemy. 

Modern industry has now thrown itself among these 
people. Their mills have been opened to the excavation of 
coal. With industry has come a new cause of warfare. 
The fight over unionism has taken the place of private 
feuds. Some of the methods used in carrying on this fight 
are the methods that the tradition of the region helps to 
explain. 

I do not mean to push this explanation too far. There 
are plenty of people in West Virginia and Kentucky who 
have never known anything about feuds. The old days are 
passing, though they have not passed yet. Judge R. D. 
Bailey, now presiding at Williamson over the trial of nine- 
teen persons accused of taking part in the Matewan 
tragedy, confirms my statements. This is a region of 
feuds," he says. "A great deal of lawlessness is being 
charged to the industrial situation that is not due to it. 
There would be lawlessness anyway." 

T. L. Lewis, secretary of the New River Coal Oper- 
ators' Association, gave me an illuminating account of the 
causes and history of violence in the West Virginia indus- 
trial conflict. Mr. Lewis was formerly vice-president and 
president of the United Mine Workers of America and, 
since he is now employed by the operators, he sees both 
sides. 

The strike of 1902, said Mr. Lewis, destroyed the oper- 
ators' confidence in the union. From then on they regarded 
it as an organization that would not live up to its agree- 
ment. Mr. Lewis was vice-president of the union at that 
time and opposed the strike. Following this strike it be- 
came a practice among operators in non-union fields, said 
Mr. Lewis, to employ private watchmen or police to 
"keep tab on the movements of union organizers and to 
[102] 



tell them that they were not desirable people." These 
watchmen were usually sworn in later as officers of the 
law. They were evidence of the operators' determination 
to pursue a policy of keeping organizers out of their ter- 
ritory as a means of crushing the union. Their job was to 
ride on trains, walk the roads and keep themselves in- 
formed about the movements of strangers. 

This practice soon grew into a worse one. Some oper- 
ators began to employ guards of a more determined and 
vicious character. These guards were expected to go as 
far as became necessary in order to protect their employ- 
ers from the advance of unionism. They were ready to 
kill, if need be, and kill they did. They were the agents of 
frank force. They usually carried arms. This was the be- 
ginning, in Mr. Lewis's opinion, of the use of violent 
methods in West Virginia. He added that guards of this 
latter type were always a minority. 

Mr. Lewis went on to accuse the union of adopting 
violent methods in imitation of the operators. He said 
that organizers threatened to extend the union "by force 
if necessary" and used inflammatory language calculated 
to incite their followers. This, he thought, "promoted 
bitterness and strife." He intimated that the union knew 
more than it was willing to tell about how some miners had 
secured their arms. 

We have seen in the course of these articles that oper- 
ators in Logan County and elsewhere still have officers of 
the law, deputy sheriffs, on their payrolls and that these 
deputies perform valuable service for them in keeping 
union organizers away. I want to interpolate here a state- 
ment that should have been made earlier. It is charged 
by many operators that the office of sheriff in Mingo 
County is as much in the pay of the union as the deputy 
sheriffs of Logan County are in the pay of the operators. 
[103] 



I was unable to find any proof of this. It is true, I be- 
lieve, that Sheriff Blankenship, recently displaced by a 
newly elected sheriff, has been, on the whole, friendly to 
the union. There is a reason for this that falls far short 
of any financial arrangement. Sheriff Blankenship has 
been, I was told, a member of a railway union. This would 
explain any sympathy he has evinced for the United Mine 
Workers' efforts in Mingo County. 

The proof of the Logan county arrangement is the 
specific statement of C. W. Jones, treasurer of the Logan 
County Operators' Association, who pays the money out 
of which the salaries of the deputy sheriffs are met. 

Language of an inflammatory nature is used by both 
sides. Union speakers have called the operators "tyrants" 
and "murderers" and have referred to the miners as 
"serfs" and "peons." In their turn they have been called 
names with quite as ugly a sound. Operators often refer 
to union organizers as "anarchists," "red-necks," and 
"Bolshevists," and one operator, publicly and under oath, 
recently characterized the members of the pit committees 
at the mines as "politicians, often crooks, thieves, and a 
great many murderers." This is not repaying vituperation 
with courtesy. Neither side has a monopoly of parliamen- 
tary grace. 



[104] 



XVI 

THE FAMOUS "MARCH*' OF MINERS 

In the preceding chapter we saw that violence has been 
a traditional weapon in the conflict over unionism in the 
West Virginia coal fields. We saw that the operators gave 
the first occasion for its use by employing police and armed 
guards in their fight against the United Mine Workers 
of America. Now I want to tell a story that shows the 
pass to which things come when force is allowed to play 
so large a part in an industrial struggle. 

This is the story of the famous march of miners in Sep- 
tember, 19 19. At that time the United Mine Workers 
of America was trying to organize one of the strongholds 
of non-union operators — Logan County. Its representa- 
tives were going into the county, and local miners were 
discussing the union with much interest. The operators 
were opposing these efforts. They were discharging men 
who joined the union. Deputy sheriffs on the payroll of 
the operators were putting union sympathizers in jail and 
assaulting them. Men came out of Logan County bruised 
and bleeding. 

Word spread abroad at this juncture that women and 
children were being killed. This was laid to the agents of 
the operators. The report lacked confirmation but it was 
believed. Miners in the union fields of Kanawha County, 
especially in the Cabin Creek district, heard the report. 
Many of them had vivid memories of the bloody fighting 

[105] 



between armed guards of the Baldwin-Felts Detective 
Agency and miners during the Cabin Creek strike of 191 2. 
They started to mobilize — to take the field against Logan 
County. 

On September 4 hundreds of miners assembled on Lens 
Creek, ten miles from Charleston and thirty miles from 
Logan County. They trudged in over the hills and by the 
roads. Many of them carried guns. Five thousand miners 
had gathered by nightfall. There were no leaders. The 
miners were determined, apparently, to invade Logan 
County, but how they were to do this no one seemed to 
know. 

At that time Mr. Keeney, president of District 17, was 
at Fairmont, in another part of the State. In response to 
a telegram from Gov. Cornwell he hurried to Charleston. 
The Governor asked him to go to Lens Creek and try to 
stop the invaders. He climbed into an automobile and 
went. On the outskirts of the crowd he was told that his 
presence was useless and that he might as well go back 
home. 

Mr. Keeney returned to Charleston and reported his 
failure to Gov. Cornwell. The Governor asked him to try 
again. Again he went to the scene and again failed to 
persuade the miners to disband. This time he asked Fred 
Mooney, the secretary of District 17, to call the Gov- 
ernor on the telephone and urge him to come and speak 
to the miners. 

The Governor came. As he aproached the crowd, a 
man thrust his head in the Governor's automobile and 
said: "Governor, is it true that women and children are 
being killed in Logan County?" 

The scene spread out before the Governor was pic- 
turesque. It was now 10 o'clock at night. Thousands of 
men, bearing arms of every description, were encamped 

[106] 



upon the hillsides and along the bed of the creek. Fires 
gleamed out of the blackness. In the light of these fires 
gun barrels shone glisteningly. 

An ice cream wagon was the only platform available. 
Gov. Cornwell mounted this and, with Mr. Keeney be- 
side him, began to speak. Silence fell upon the miners. 
The Governor begged them to disband. He told them 
that they did not know what tragedy their action might 
lead to. He said that if they would go home he would 
cause an investigation to be made of conditions in Logan 
County, and if women and children were being killed 
there, he would see that it was stopped. 

The Governor produced an effect. As he stepped down 
a trapper boy whizzed his pistol over the Governor's head 
and, with a whoop, shot into the air. Instantly 1,000 guns 
spit fire and bullets into the darkness. Keeney turned 
upon the trapper boy. 'Tut up your gun, you fool," he 
said. The trapper boy answered: "Can't a fellow salute 
the Governor ?" 

Many of the miners prepared to go home. Others 
stayed. It was uncertain what would happen. 

Next morning 1,500 miners had continued the march 
to Danville, ten miles from Logan County. Again Mr. 
Keeney headed them off. He went to Danville by train. 
Meanwhile, three men who had been sent to Logan 
County to report upon conditions there returned and said 
that all was quiet. Gradually the determination of the 
leaders who had now emerged was battered down. The 
men were beginning to appreciate the magnitude of their 
undertaking. Two special trains were sent from Charles- 
ton to bring them back. These trains were held in readi- 
ness. The miners were finally induced to board the trains 
and were returned to their homes. 

Had they gone on they would have met a force of sev- 

[107] 



eral hundred recruited by the authorities and operators of 
Logan County to stop them. A battle would inevitably 
have been the result. 

The exact origin of this march and its instigators, if 
there were any, has never been thoroughly determined. 
Individuals holding positions in the union had appeared at 
various mines on the days immediately preceding the 
march. Whether these men dropped words that may have 
lighted the conflagration is uncertain. Several superin- 
tendents of mines said that committees of their own men 
had told them, the day before the march, that the mines 
would be idle next day. In this connection a circular letter 
by Mr. Keeney on August 29 has been given undue import- 
ance. This letter is addressed "to all local unions" and 
says that "they are now beating men up and jailing them 
right and left" in Logan County and other parts of the 
field. It says: "We are going to organize those fields re- 
gardless of the opposition." There is nothing in this cir- 
cular to lead one to regard it as the cause of the march, 
except that the march took place six days after it was 
issued. The circular calls upon every local to exhaust 
"every effort to settle all petty grievances" in order that 
the union's full strength might be thrown into the effort 
to organize those fields. Gov. Cornwell has publicly cred- 
ited Mr. Keeney with having helped to avert a tragedy. 

Gov. Cornwell made good on his promise to have an 
investigation. A commission appointed by him brought 
out the facts in regard to the payment of deputy sheriffs by 
the operators and the service rendered by those deputies 
in beating up miners, sympathizing with the union and 
keeping organizers out of the county. These facts have 
been presented in detail in preceding chapters. No sub- 
stantiation was found for the charge that women and 
children had been killed. 

[ 108 .] 



This account illustrates what happens when an industrial 
conflict rages unchecked. It gives the non-union operators 
ground for their fear that their mines are in danger from 
union miners. It also shows what may result from the 
misuse of local government and the crushing of the legiti- 
mate activities of working men by force. 

The situation is charged with just as much dynamite 
as it was on the day when the miners started out to in- 
vade Logan County. The deputy sheriffs are still in the 
pay of the coal operators. They still keep watch over the 
interests of their patrons and prevent union organizers 
from carrying on their work in the county. 



[109] 



XVII 

WAGES IN UNION AND NON-UNION FIELDS 

How do wages paid to non-union coal miners compare 
with those paid to union miners in West Virginia? Are 
they larger or smaller? Do employers in the unorganized 
fields take advantage of the absence of collective bargain- 
ing? Do they try to keep wages down? On the other hand, 
does the miner better himself financially when he joins 
the union ? 

These are vital questions. They are also difficult. The 
wage scales paid at coal mines are very intricate. Many 
factors help to determine what miners get; among these 
are the width of the space in which they work, the hard- 
ness of the bottom, the quantity of impurities to be re- 
moved, and other items. Since conditions vary from local- 
ity to locality, it is not always easy to compare one region 
with another. Then, too, it is sometimes difficult to learn 
just what wages are paid in non-union fields, where there 
are no agreements between the operators and the union. 

Men working about coal mines are paid in two ways. 
One is by a daily wage. This is paid to men who perform 
certain classes of day labor, both inside and outside the 
mine. It ranges from $3.50 to $8, most classes of day 
labor receiving now between $6 and $7.50. The other 
way in which men are paid is by the quantity of coal pro- 
duced. This applies to those who cut the coal with ma- 
chines, to pick miners, to those who load it on cars, etc. 
[no] 



These men are commonly called "miners" proper, in dis- 
tinction from those who work by the day, who are called 
day labor. Miners comprise slightly more than half the 
men who work around coal mines in West Virginia. 

There is not much contention in regard to the wages 
paid to day labor. This class of workmen, some of whom 
are skilled, usually receive as high wages in non-union as 
in union fields. Since it is easy to compare the wages paid 
to these men in one place with those paid in another, to 
pay a perceptibly lower rate would be to make it difficult 
to get men. Some non-union operators even pay a slightly 
higher wage to their day labor in order to counteract the 
arguments of unionism. 

The amount paid to the miner is the chief subject of 
contention. Here the union insists that men in the non- 
union fields suffer. There is a fundamental difference in 
the way miners are paid in union fields and the way they 
are paid in non-union fields. In union fields they are paid 
by the ton; the^miner's coal is weighed or measured as it 
comes from the mine, and he is sure of being credited with 
his full product; union contracts call for the employment 
of check weighmen to weigh the coal. In non-union fields 
the coal is commonly not weighed. No check weighmen 
are employed. Miners are paid by the car; cars vary in 
size ; and since scales are usually not available for weigh- 
ing them, the miner is dependent upon his employer's 
statement in regard to the capacity of the car. If the em- 
ployer's statement is correct, the superintendent still has 
an opportunity to insist upon cars being loaded fuller than 
they are supposed to be, a situation under which the miner 
would be paid for less coal than he was actually producing. 
His only method of protecting himself in such a situation 
is to load the cars with less than they are supposed to 
carry. 

[ml 



The facts concerning wages presented in this chapter 
are suggestive rather than conclusive. In the spring and 
early summer of 1920 the United Mine Workers' of 
America organized a number of locals in the hitherto non- 
union field of Mingo County. On June 30, Mr. Keeney, 
president of District 17 of the union, wrote to miners in 
these locals asking for the measurements of cars used in the 
Mingo field and the rates paid for filling them. At the time 
of my visit this information was still unused. It lay in the 
form in which it had been received — original schedule 
sheets sent out by Mr. Keeney and filled in at the mines. 
Some forty mines had answered. 

Obviously this information, if accurate, afforded a means 
of comparing the rates paid to miners in the non-union 
field of Mingo County with those paid in union fields. 
All that would be necessary was to estimate the capacity 
of these cars in cubic feet and convert this into tons, in 
order to know what rates miners in Mingo County were 
paid per ton. It would then be necessary to select some 
union field for comparison. At that time the union was 
suggesting the adoption of the wage scale effective at the 
Coalburg seam, in Kanawha County, for use in Mingo 
County ; conditions there were declared to be very similar 
to those in Mingo County. Since a number of mines in 
Mingo County did actually sign agreements based on the 
Coalburg scale, a little later, this scale was chosen for the 
comparison. 

Receiving permission to use the sheets, I took them to 
David A. Jayne, a certified public accountant in Charles- 
ton. Mr. Jayne agreed to make the necessary calculations. 

His report was interesting. He found that the data 
supplied to him were not complete in a number of in- 
stances. Using only those instances in which they were 
complete, he found that thirteen mines in Mingo County 

[112] 



pay an average rate of 45 cents a ton for machine loading 
in rooms. This is an occupation employing a large number 
of men. The Coalburg scale calls for a rate of 69.3 cents 
a ton for machine loading in rooms. Here is an excess of 
24.3 cents a ton in favor of the union rate. It is more than 
a half more. 

The average non-union rate in Mingo County is af- 
fected by high rates paid at two mines. Eleven of the thir- 
teen mines there paid less than the union rate. Seven paid 
less than 50 cents and six less than 40 cents. One paid 32 
cents and one 31 cents. The two that paid higher rates 
paid 71 and 87 cents. 

Mr. Jayne found, moreover, that for machine loading 
in entries twelve mines paid an average rate of 49 cents a 
ton. This is another occupation employing a large number 
of men. The union rate at the Coalburg seam is 75.55 
cents a ton. Here is an excess of 26.55 cents a ton in favor 
of the union rate. Again the average is affected by two 
high rates. Ten of the twelve mines in Mingo County 
paid less than the Coalburg rate. Five paid less than 40 
cents and one paid 31 cents. The two high rates were 71 
cents and $1.01. 

For machine loading on pillar, Mr. Jayne found, eight 
mines in Mingo County paid an average of 45 cents a ton. 
This class of work is not mentioned in the Coalburg scale. 

Pick mining at the Coalburg seam receives $1.02. Three 
kinds of pick mining are mentioned in the data supplied 
to Mr. Jayne. One of these, pick mining in room, re- 
ceives $1.07; this information was available for only two 
mines, however. Seven mines pay an average of 60 cents 
a ton for pick mining on pillar, and for pick mining in 
entries three mines pay an average of 78 cents a ton. 

Eight mines in Mingo County pay an average of 16 
cents a ton for "machine cutting." Machine cutting in 

.["3] 



the Coalburg scale is of two kinds. Machine cutting in 
rooms is paid for at the rate of 16% cents a ton, and ma- 
chine cutting in "entries, break-throughs between entries, 
and room necks" receives 15 cents a ton. 

What is the conclusion from all this? Assuming the 
accuracy of the data supplied to Mr. Jayne — an assump- 
tion that could not be proved except by repeating the 
measurements of all the cars in question — it would ap- 
pear that two of the most important occupations about a 
coal mine receive, in general, far less in the non-union 
field of Mingo County than they do in a similar union 
field. This may be true also of some of the other occupa- 
tions. The absence of identical descriptions of most of 
these occupations, however, makes the comparison diffi- 
cult. In respect to two occupations, or phases of two oc- 
cupations, the average non-union rate would appear to be 
higher than the union rate; though in respect to one of 
these the number of mines (two) is too small to justify 
a conclusion. 

Non-union operators frequently contend that even if 
the miner in a non-union field receives a lower rate per 
ton than the miner in a union field in West Virginia, he 
can still earn as much as his union fellow-worker because 
the conditions under which mining is done in the non- 
union fields are so superior ; he can produce more coal in 
a given length of time. It is true that in some non-union 
fields the conditions are superior. The miner contends, 
however, that he should get some of the benefit of these 
natural advantages, as well as the coal company. If veins 
of coal are thicker, impurities less, and more coal can be 
taken from the mine in a day, he should derive part of the 
benefit, he thinks. There is much justification, surely, for 
this contention. 

Now let us discuss actual earnings, rather than rates 

[in] 



of pay. It is the earnings perhaps that count most. They 
represent the contents of the pay envelope; they pay 
grocers' bills and buy shoes. 

Not long after the Mingo County strike was called sev- 
eral companies signed agreements with the union. Among 
these companies were two large mines, so-called "tipple" 
mines, employing several hundred men each. The em- 
ployees of these companies were, therefore, being paid 
under union contracts for the first time. Before that 
they had received whatever wages the companies chose to 
pay them or whatever men could be hired for. 

Here, apparently, was an opportunity to see whether the 
earnings of these men increased under the union contract. 
If the receipts of some of them could be traced down 
through both non-union and union periods of time, inter- 
esting information ought to result. Before going to these 
companies, I was told by C. H. Workman, a representa- 
tive of the union, that one of them, the P. M. and C. Coal 
Mine Company, had a reputation for paying good wages. 
His guess was that I would be less likely to find enhanced 
earnings there, under the union contract, than at the 
other, the Alma-Thacker Fuel Company. 

Mr. McConaghy, manager of the P. M. and C. Coal 
Mine Company, kindly agreed to go over the books with 
me. At the outset we were met by a difficulty. Few men, 
it seemed, had worked for the company sufficiently long 
both before and after the strike to permit valuable com- 
parisons to be made. We finally selected six, however, and 
set to work; the periods compared were April I — June 30, 
1920, a non-union period, and October 16 — December 31, 
a union period. Then a second difficulty arose. During 
the non-union period the men had been paid yardage; that 
is, they had been paid, in addition to their regular rates, 
fifty cents a yard for taking out unusually hard bottom. 

[115] 



This had been quite an item. Now, however, it was not 
being paid; the union agreement had left the question of 
yardage for local adjustment, and the company had re- 
fused to pay it. The miners regarded this with disfavor 
and were preparing to make a protest. The average daily 
earnings of these six men, during the non-union period and 
for the days actually worked, amounted to $9.26. This 
included yardage. When yardage was deducted the daily 
average became $8.25. During the union period their av- 
erage daily earnings were $8.79. Here, therefore, was a 
decrease, in favor of the non-union rate, of 47 cents when 
yardage was included in their non-union earnings and an 
increase of 54 cents when it was not. Four of the men 
showed decreases in their daily averages and two showed 
increases when yardage was included. The decreases were 
$0.67, $1.06, $1.45, and $1.95. The increases were $0.69 
and $1.64. Deducting yardage again, the figures were re- 
versed. Four of the men showed increases and two de- 
creases. Mr. Workman's statement, therefore, seemed to 
be borne out by the P. M. & C. Coal Mine Company. 

Results were very different at the Alma-Thacker Fuel 
Company. Here Mr. Glenn Deaton, the general manager, 
assisted me in looking at the books. We met the same dif- 
ficulty as before in regard to the small number of men who 
had worked for any length of time both before and after 
the strike. We finally selected five. The periods com- 
pared were March i-April 30, 1920, non-union, and Oc- 
tober 1 -November 30, 1920, union. 

The average daily earnings of these five men during the 
non-union period were $9.03 for the days on which they 
worked. During the union period the earnings were 
$10.98. Here is an increase of $1.95. There is no ques- 
tion of yardage here, since the men received it both under 
the union contract and before. 

[n6] 



Some of the individual increases were large. They 
amounted to 50 cents, 94 cents, $2.02, $2.34, and $3.99. 
These be it remembered, are increases in daily earnings. 

One of the men, Joe Martin, earned $281.40 during 
the two non-union months and $466.27 during the two 
union months. This is an increase of $92.43 a month. 
Another man, William Stamp, earned $254.34 during the 
non-union period and $398.22 during the union, 
Lawrence Price earned $384.68 as a non-union miner and 
$464.64 as a union miner. Alex Fodor earned less in total 
cash during the union period than during the non-union, 
but he worked fewer days. His earnings were $276.47, as 
compared with $299.64, and his days worked thirty-one, 
as compared with thirty-seven. He averaged 50 cents a 
day more during the union period. Lee Mounts also earned 
less — $284.53, as compared with $349.59 — but he again 
worked only twenty-eight days, as compared with thirty- 
eight. He averaged 94 cents a day more during the union 
period. 

Mr. Deaton had not been fully won to a liking for 
unionism, yet he said: "Both the men and the company 
are profiting under the union. The men are being paid 
by the ton now, instead of by the car. They load the cars 
fuller as a consequence. This gives the company more coal 
for its money, and the men's earnings have gone up. Effi- 
ciency has been promoted. Moreover, such work as lay- 
ing track, setting timbers, and shooting coal is wiped off 
our books as a day labor charge. Formerly we paid mine 
workers to do this. Now the miner does it himself or pays 
some one else to do it. The company is thus relieved to 
some extent." 

One advantage of the union contract, from the miner's 
point of view, is that it provides for so many contingencies. 
Unforeseen conditions are constantly arising in the mining 

[117] 



of coal; if a superintendent is free to do as he chooses 
when these arise — to pay more for taking out hard bottom, 
removing unexpected impurities, etc., or to pay the same 
as for ordinary work — the miner says there is no guar- 
antee that he himself will not get the worst of the deal. 
If, on the other hand, the union contract specifies what 
shall be paid under each of these contingencies, the miner 
benefits. 

Figures ordinarily given by non-union operators as 
showing the earnings of miners in their employ are de- 
fective. They are likely to be the earnings of the men who 
make most. An instance of this occurred before the com- 
mission appointed by Governor Corn well to study condi- 
tions in Logan County, mentioned in Chapter VIII. Fig- 
ures submitted to that body indicated very high earnings 
but when they were analyzed they were discovered to be 
earnings of only a small number of men who had made 
extraordinary amounts. No statement of average earnings 
was submitted. The justification for this was that the 
figures given showed the opportunities open to miners in 
that county. 

We have now discussed both rates of pay and actual 
earnings. From the evidence obtainable, it is a fair con- 
clusion that on the whole the miner benefits financially 
when he joins the union. 



[118] 



XVIII 

WHO OWNS THE COAL LANDS? 

Who owns the coal and coal lands in the non-union 
fields of West Virginia ? Who is back of the opposition to 
unionism in that territory? 

No full answer to this question can be given. The 
owners of coal lands and the stockholders of coal mining 
companies cannot always be ascertained. A resolution was 
introduced into the last session of Congress calling for an 
investigation of the whole West Virginia industrial con- 
flict, to be made by the Senate Committee on Education 
and Labor. Such an investigation would doubtless help 
to reveal what interests are responsible for the strong op- 
position to collective bargaining. 

The United States Steel Corporation is one of the 
large holders of coal lands. It owns lands in Mingo and 
Logan Counties and leases lands in McDowell County; 
these are three of the counties in which the fight against 
unionism is most intense. The annual report of the Steel 
Corporation for 19 19 states that subsidiary companies of 
the corporation own, in Logan and Mingo Counties com- 
bined, 53,736 acres of coking coal land and 32,648 acres 
of surface coal land. Moreover, the corporation is extend- 
ing its holdings in that locality. In Letcher and Harlan 
Counties, Ky., close to Mingo County on the south, it ac- 
quired, in 19 19, 15,662 acres. This made its holdings in 

[119] 



those two counties 74,344 acres of coking coal and 32,002 
acres of surface coal. 

In the Pocahontas coal field the steel corporation leases, 
through subsidiaries 63,766 acres of the best coking and 
fuel property, according to its 19 17 report. This is lo- 
cated in McDowell and Wyoming Counties, W. Va., and 
Tazewell County, Va. Approximately 50,000 acres of this 
is in McDowell County. The Illinois Steel Company, a 
subsidiary, is understood to be the lessee of this land. 

The Steel Corporation's mines in McDowell County 
are operated by the United States Coal and Coke Com- 
pany. This is the largest coal producing company in West 
Virginia. It produced 4,680,000 gross tons in 191 8. No 
other company came within 950,000 tons of it. It employs 
more men than any other company in McDowell County. 
In 19 1 8 it employed 3,888. Eleven mines have been 
opened on its property. The company has built towns, 
constructed coke ovens, and carried on its operations on a 
huge scale. 

The McDowell County property has been in the con- 
trol of the Steel 'Corporation for twenty years. The pre- 
liminary report of its board of directors, submitted to the 
stockholders at the first annual meeting, February 17, 
1902, said: "Subsidiary companies of the corporation have 
secured a lease of 50,000 acres of the Pocahontas coking 
and fuel property, on a royalty basis, and on favorable 
terms for production and transportation. Plans for the 
prompt development of this property on a large scale are 
under consideration, and it is expected that in the near 
future there will be received from this field a large supply 
of coke and fuel coal. With this acquisition, it is estimated 
that there is now controlled by subsidiary companies a suf- 
ficient quantity of the best and cheapest coking coal to pro- 
vide, on the basis of present consumption, for all the neces- 
[120] 



sities of the furnaces of these companies during the next 
sixty years. The corporation has guaranteed the perform- 
ance of this lease on the part of the lessees." 

That the Steel Corporation has been a consistent, and 
at times a bitter opponent of unionism in its steel plants 
is well known. 

The Norfolk & Western Railway Company is also 
heavily interested in coal lands in these districts. It trav- 
erses the Pocahontas field and is practically the only rail- 
road that serves that territory. This railway owns 9.994 
shares out of a total of 10,000 shares of the Pocahontas 
Coal and Coke Company, according to the Railway's an- 
nual report for 19 19. These shares were originally ac- 
quired in 1902. At that time the Pocahontas Coal and 
Coke company held 295,000 acres of land in the Poca- 
hontas district. This was about four-fifths of the entire 
Pocahontas field. The Norfolk & Western joined with 
Pocahontas Coal and Coke Company in the issue of $20,- 
000,000 4 per cent, purchase money mortgage bonds, due 
December 1, 1941. 

The Pocahontas Coal and Coke Company does not en- 
gage in mining coal. Its principal purpose is to make 
leases on royalties to operating companies. At the time 
the Norfolk & Western gained control of this company the 
royalties on leases were 10 cents a ton on coal and 15 cents 
a ton on coke. Twenty-five mining companies were then 
in active operation on the company's property. To-day the 
number is much larger. The Norfolk & Western Railway 
Company is said to be dominated, through stock ownership 
and interlocking directorates, by the Pennsylvania Rail- 
road. 

The Pocahontas field in West Virginia comprises chiefly 
McDowell and Mercer Counties. It is in these counties 

[121] 



that forty-six coal companies have joined to secure injunc- 
tions barring representatives of the United Mine Work- 
ers of America from entering upon their property. It is 
in these counties that anti-union contracts of employment 
have been introduced widely to prevent miners from hav- 
ing anything to do with the union. In Logan County the 
union is effectually barred also. The deputy sheriffs are 
in the pay of the coal operators. 

It is interesting to see what the miners are saying about 
this situation,. Says W. Jett Lauck, consulting economist 
for the United Mine Workers of America : 

"From its own records it is clear that the United States 
Steel Corporation, through its subsidiary companies, is the 
largest producer of coal in West Virginia, and employs 
more men than any other coal mining company in the 
district immediately adjacent to Mingo County, and that 
the Steel Corporation, as well as the Norfolk & Western 
Railway Company, is extending acquisition of coal lands 
and opening coal mining operations in the Mingo district 
and the coal regions in Kentucky adjoining Mingo County 
on the south. 

"It is also apparent that this colossus, while extending 
its holdings and control of coal lands in and around this 
district, is at the same time, extending to this district its 
labor policy of crushing labor unions. This is the guiding 
hand behind the effort to crush out the mine workers* or- 
ganization in Mingo County. These interests are refus- 
ing the mine worker the right of collective bargaining." 

How far these two corporations actually exert an in- 
fluence hostile to unionism in the West Virginia coal fields 
is not revealed, of course, by a mere statement of their 
holdings. The Norfolk & Western controls enough land 
to make it a dominant factor in any policy adopted. The 
Steel Corporation may, of course, exercise an influence 
[ I"] 



larger than its mere acreage would perhaps entitle it to. 
That acreage is not in itself enough to give it a deciding 
voice. Its prestige, however, and the fact that the miners 
identify it with a strong anti-union point of view are im- 
portant factors in the situation. 



[123] 



XIX 

CONCLUSIONS 

The essential facts in regard to the industrial conflict in 
the West Virginia coal fields have now been told. This 
struggle between the miners and the United Mine Work- 
ers' of America, on the one hand, and the owners and man- 
agers of coal mines, on the other, has been going on for 
two decades. It has been attended by strikes, court action, 
paralyzation of industry, and bloodshed. The union ap- 
pears to be winning if one looks at its gain in numbers. 
Yet the operators who have so far escaped it, are building 
stronger intrenchments and taking a vigorous offensive. 
They expect to fight it to a standstill; indeed, the more 
confident ones expect to drive it from the field. 

Let us now see what conclusions may be drawn. The 
fundamental issue in this fight is the right of men to join 
a labor union. This issue must not be allowed to be ob- 
scured by the operators' charge that the particular union 
concerned is an undesirable one, or even an illegal one. 
Its desirability is a matter of opinion, and so long as it is 
allowed to operate as a legal organization the operators 
have no justification for discriminating against it on that 
ground. 

On this fundamental issue there can be but one opinion. 
The right of men to join a labor union is guaranteed by 
every principle of democracy. The American people have 
granted it; the American courts have sustained it. It is 
a right growing out of the very structure of modern in- 
dustry which opposes vast organizations of capital and 
power to the individual wage earner, and renders him prac- 

[124] 



tically helpless to advance his own interests alone. To 
deny him this right, whether directly or indirectly, is to 
transport Prussianism to American industry. 

There is another issue closely related to this. That is 
the right of organizers for the United Mine Workers of 
America to make their appeal to miners freely and without 
hindrance. There are parts of West Virginia to-day in 
which they cannot do this. They are prevented by court 
injunctions, by anti-union contracts, and by the hired 
agents of the operators. This, again, is a fundamental 
question of democracy. 

Let us take an analogy. Suppose a representative of the 
United Mine Workers wanted to address an audience in 
New York City. He would hire Carnegie Hall or Mad- 
ison Square Garden. He would make his speech. No one 
would interfere. So long as he violated no law he would 
be unmolested. 

Transfer the scene to McDowell County or Logan 
County, West Virginia. Let the same speaker desire to say 
the same things to an audience of miners there. He may 
not do so. The owners of the coal mines will not let him. 
He cannot carry the message of unionism into McDowell 
County without violating an injunction of the State Court. 
He cannot read the printed statement of purposes of the 
United Mine Workers of America. If he tries to do this 
in Logan County, deputy sheriffs paid by the operators 
will break up his meeting and run him out of the county. 
So much for the fundamental rights involved. On the 
other hand, the methods adopted by the United Mine 
Workers of America have not always been the methods of 
persuasion and of an appeal to logic. Aroused by the 
nature of their opposition, they have been provocative 
themselves in turn. They have used abuse and the threat 
that lay in knowing that large numbers of men were 

[125] 



armed. They have preached the gospel of discontent in 
some of its extreme forms. Individual organizers who are 
Socialists have mingled doctrines of class warfare with 
their arguments for unionism. They have represented the 
miner as the slave of a wage system that was robbing him 
of his share of the product of his labor, and his employer 
as the master who did the robbing. This has naturally 
enraged the operators who have seen in this an implicit 
purpose to destroy their business and to strip them of their 
property. 

Unionism probably means reduced profits for the oper- 
ators. How large this reduction is, and how inevitable an 
accompaniment of unionism, it is impossible to answer. 
The very operators who are most vigorously opposing the 
union declare that the wages paid by them are as high as 
those paid to members of the union. If that be true, the 
cost of recognizing the union would, it seems, be slight. 
On the other hand, we have seen that there is good ground 
for supposing that "miners," the men who actually cut 
the coal and load it, receive somewhat higher wages, on 
the average, in union than in non-union fields. 

The cost of small strikes, or stoppages of work as the 
union calls them, is another item upon which the oper- 
ators figure when they consider accepting the union. They 
can themselves reduce the number of these by more care- 
ful attention to the things that cause them. That this is 
an additional expense and cause of waste may be readily 
admitted. It may be gravely doubted, however, whether 
it exceeds the present cost of fighting unionism. That cost 
has been enormous. The members of the Williamson Op- 
erators* Association have assessed themselves during re- 
cent months 10 cents a ton for every ton of coal produced 
as a means of paying for newspaper advertising, hiring 
private detectives, and carrying on other methods of pre- 

[126] 



venting the organization of their mines. For the normal 
purposes of the association not a fifth of that assessment 
is laid. The miners in their turn are obliged to spend large 
sums of money as a means of carrying on the fight. 

There remains the question of the everyday life of the 
miner. This has nothing to do, directly, with unionism, 
but we have seen that the engulfing paternalism of the 
miner's existence provides a soil in which the desire to 
join with his fellows in some sort of common effort to 
better his lot may prove a seed of especial hardiness. In 
any event, it is a state of society that requires serious 
thought. When practically the entire labor force of a 
basic industry comprising 400,000 or 500,000 people in a 
single State have no security of residence and are depend- 
ent for all their conveniences and many of their neces- 
saries upon the business need or generosity of a group of 
employers, a situation exists that is fraught with many 
possibilities of evil. No argument of historical exigency 
or justification can stand up against this fact. 

One remedy for this paternalism may lie in the estab- 
lishment of miners' towns or communities throughout the 
coal fields. These would have to be towns in which the 
miner could own his own house or lease it under certain 
protective safeguards. He could then enjoy some of the 
normal relationships of life. He could trade at independ- 
ent stores, build his own schools, conduct his own churches, 
travel on his own roads, and elect his own local officials. 
Work trains might carry him to and from his place of work. 
He would cease to be subject to his employer's conception 
of what was good for him. Such a plan would involve, 
perhaps, buying land from coal companies or leasing it for 
town sites. Obviously there would be difficulties to be 
met. To many operators it will sound chimerical. One 
operator, however, discussed it sympathetically with me. 

[ 127] 



This was George M. Jones, general manager of the Lun- 
dale Coal Company, the Three Forks Coal Company, and 
the Amherst Fuel Company. Said Mr. Jones: 

"I have seen miners evicted from their houses, and it's 
a pretty serious business. A man who has his goods dumped 
out on the street doesn't get over it in a hurry. Why 
shouldn't miners own their own homes? It would give 
them more self-respect. They do now in some parts of the 
coal field. One difficulty with miners' towns in West Vir- 
ginia would be the narrowness of our valleys. This would 
make it hard to find open spaces enough. But we might 
overcome that if all the operators would try to solve the 
problem together. Work trains would help if the railroads 
would run them. They run them around Charleston and 
in Ohio and Indiana. I'm not sure our whole wage rela- 
tionship to our men is right. Why should coal mining 
companies be in the house renting business and the store 
business? Why not just in the mining business? Of course, 
some companies would probably refuse to sell or lease 
land. But a beginning might be made. I'd like to see the 
idea tried out. The results would be important." 

Meanwhile, West Virginia promises perpetual conflict. 
The public has an enormous stake in that conflict. In one 
form or another the conflict will go on until these three 
things happen : ( i ) The right of miners to join their union 
is recognized; (2) both the operators and the union abstain 
from provocative and extra-legal acts, and (3) some way 
is found to give the workers a more direct interest in their 
environment and a greater control over the conditions of 
their own lives. At this price only can industrial peace be 
purchased in West Virginia. 



[128] 



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